A CALIFORNIA BEACH 



splashed into the water within a foot of the duck, 

 almost under him, in fact. The man and his com- 

 panions were noisily amused, but the bird contin- 

 ued on his moderate course as if nothing had 

 happened. The big stone might have been a 

 raindrop for all the effect it produced. If the 

 creature had been human, I should have set him 

 down for a fool. 



And it is well within the possibilities, I sup- 

 pose, that there are idiotic and crazy individuals 

 among birds as well as among men ; birds, for 

 example, that fly by the hour, day after day, 

 against windows, as I have known an occasional 

 robin and English sparrow to do, and will not be 

 driven off, and this absurd, unfrightenable coot. 

 And if this is true, we are perhaps as far astray 

 in judging of the mental capacity of birds in gen- 

 eral from such examples as we should be to esti- 

 mate the intellectual faculties of the German or 

 any other race by what we see in their asylums 

 for the insane and feeble-minded. 



Even in forming an opinion concerning so in- 

 nocent a subject as the intelligence of birds and 

 such like humble people, it becomes us to exer- 

 cise a proper degree of modesty, and even (why 

 not ?) of Christian charity ; the more as we are 

 ignorant of their language (which accordingly, 

 in our humanly arrogant mood, we brand as in- 

 31 



