WAYS OF NATURE 
his breakfast ? This last supposition is just as rea- 
sonable as any part of the story. A grouse will not 
readily leave her unfledged young, but she will leave 
her eggs when disturbed by man or beast with 
apparent unconcern. 
It is the rarest thing in the world that real 
observers see any of these startling and exceptional 
things in nature. Thoreau saw none. White saw 
none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir 
reports none, Audubon none. It is always your 
untrained observer that has his poser, his shower 
of frogs or lizards, or his hoop snakes, and the like. 
The impossible things that country people see or 
hear of would make a book of wonders. In some 
places fishermen believe that the loon carries its 
egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say 
that they are in a position to know. So they are. 
But opportunity is only half the problem; the verify- 
ing mind is the other half. One of our writers of 
popular nature books relates this curious incident of 
“animal surgery” among wild ducks, He discovered 
two eider ducks swimming about a fresh-water pond 
and acting queerly, “dipping their heads under 
water and keeping them there for a minute or more 
at a time.” He later discovered that the ducks had 
large mussels attached to their tongues, and that 
they were trying to get rid of them by drowning 
them. The birds had discovered that the salt-water 
mussel cannot live in fresh water. Now am I to 
180 
