FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 



making us more considerate and merciful toward 

 our brute neighbors ; its bad side is seen in the 

 degree to which it leads to a false interpretation of 

 their lives. The tendency to which I refer is no 

 doubt partly the result of our growing humanitari- 

 anism and feeling of kinship with all the lower orders 

 of creation, and partly due to the fact that we live in 

 a time of impromptu nature study, when birds and 

 plants and trees are fast becoming a fad with half 

 the population, and when the " yellow " reporter is 

 abroad in the fields and woods. Never before in my 

 time have so many exaggerations and misconcep- 

 tions of the wild life about us been current in the 

 popular mind. It is becoming the fashion to ascribe 

 to the lower animals nearly all our human motives 

 and attributes, and often to credit them with plans 

 and devices that imply reason and a fair amount of 

 mechanical knowledge. An illustration of this is the 

 account of the nest of a pair of orioles, as described 

 in the " North American Review " for May, 1903, by 

 a writer of popular nature books. These orioles built 

 a nest so extraordinary that it can be accounted for 

 only on the theory that there is a school of the woods, 

 and that these two birds had been pupils there and 

 had taken an advanced course in Strings. Among 

 other things impossible for birds to do, these orioles 

 tied a knot in the end of a string to prevent its fray- 

 ing in the wind ! If the whole idea were not too pre- 

 posterous for even a half-witted child to believe, one 

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