READING THE BOOK OF NATURE 
beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks 
like intelligence, but, as Hamerton says, “the mo- 
ment we think of them as human, we are lost.” 
A farmer had a yearling that sucked the cows. 
To prevent this, he put on the yearling a muzzle 
set full of sharpened nails. These of course pricked 
the cows, and they would not stand to be drained of 
their milk. The next day the farmer saw the year- 
ling rubbing the nails against a rock in order, as 
he thought, to dull them so they would not prick 
the cows! How much easier to believe that the 
beast was simply trying to get rid of the awkward 
incumbrance upon its nose. What can a calf or 
a cow know about sharpened nails, and the use 
of a rock to dull them? This is a kind of outside 
knowledge — outside of their needs and experi- 
ences — that they could not possess. 
An Arizona friend of mine lately told me this 
interesting incident about the gophers that infested 
his cabin when he was a miner. The gophers ate up 
his bread. He could not hide it from them or put 
it beyond their reach. Finally, he bethought him to 
stick his loaf on the end of a long iron poker that 
he had, and then stand up the poker in the middle 
of his floor. Still, when he came back to his cabin, 
he would find his loaf eaten full of holes. One day, 
having nothing to do, he concluded to watch and 
see how the gophers reached the bread, and this 
was what he saw: The animals climbed up the side 
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