WAYS OF NATURE 
sooner in fresh water than in salt or than in the air. 
A duck’s mouth held open and the tongue pinched 
by a shell-fish would doubtless soon be in a feverish 
and abnormal condition, which cool water would 
tend to alleviate. One is unable to see how the 
ducks could have acquired the kind of human ex- 
perimental knowledge attributed to them. A per- 
son might learn such a secret, but surely not a duck. 
In discovering and in eluding its enemies, and in 
many other ways, the duck’s wits are very sharp, 
but to attribute to them a knowledge of the virtues 
of fresh water over salt in a certain unusual emer- 
gency — an emergency that could not have occurred 
to the race of ducks, much less to individuals often 
enough for a special instinct to have been developed 
to meet it — is to make them entirely human. 
The whole idea of animal surgery which the 
incident implies — such as mending broken legs 
with clay, salving wounds with pitch, or resorting 
to bandages or amputations — is preposterous. Sick 
or wounded animals will often seek relief from pain 
by taking to the water or to the mud, or maybe to 
the snow, just as cows will seek the pond or the 
bushes to escape the heat and the flies, and that is 
about the extent of their surgery. The dog licks 
his wound; it no doubt soothes and relieves it. 
The cow licks her calf; she licks him into shape; 
it is her instinct to do so. That tongue of hers is 
a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture and flexi- 
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