: 568 General Notes. [June, 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
INTELLIGENCE OF THE HEN AND Opossum,—Advices from home 
inform me that an early brood of chickens with the mother hen 
were taken into the cellar to protect them from the very cold 
weather which prevailed. Here they did well and appeared con- 
tented till a thaw and flood occurred. When the cellar was 
standing deep in the water with all of the chicks perched on her 
bac i 
could step. She could have flown to higher objects, but this 
~ 
drowned. : 
This reminds me of an incident which I reported to the 
-NaTuratist many years ago, which may be briefly repeated. A 
boatman on the Illinois and Michigan canal observed an object 
‘on a fence-post, surrounded by water, which enabled him to work 
is boat up to it. There he found an opossum with severa 
young ones in the pouch or pocket with which nature has provided 
this animal in which to carry her young. She was nearly fam- 
ished and suffered herself to be taken on board without the least 
opposition and ate ravenously of the food given her. were 
taken to Chicago and presented to my brother, in whose posses- 
_ sion I saw them after the young ones had. attained the size of 
_ small rats. They made rather pretty pets. 
ge _ In both of these instances there seems to have been more of 
sf reason than of instinct, if by the latter we mean that inherited 
: faculty which long-repeated emergencies has taught a long an- 
cestral line a mode of avoiding or escaping danger.—/. D. Caton. 
Tue SwaLLow as A SuRGEON.— Dr. Walter F. Morgan, of 
Leavenworth, Kan., sends to the Medical Record this curious 
account of what may be called aviarian surgery, related to ae 
in 1876 by the late Joseph O’Brien, Esq., of Cleveland, O.: “On 
= going into his barn Mr. O’Brien discovered a swallow’s nest, and 
ing a natural observer and lover of animals, he climbed to e 
being smaller and 
lighter covering of 
