I 



WAYS OF NATURE 



I WAS much amused lately by a half-dozen or 

 more letters that came to me from some Califor- 

 nian schoolchildren, who wrote to ask if I would 

 please tell them whether or not birds have sense. 

 One little girl said : " I would be pleased if you would 

 write and tell me if birds have sense. I wanted to 

 see if I could n't be the first one to know." I felt 

 obliged to reply to the children that we ourselves 

 do not have sense enough to know just how much 

 sense the birds and other wild creatures do have, 

 and that they do appear to have some, though their 

 actions are probably the result of what we call in- 

 stinct, or natural prompting, like that of the bean- 

 stalk when it climbs the pole. Yet a bean-stalk will 

 sometimes show a kind of perversity or depravity 

 that looks like the result of deliberate choice. Each 

 season, among my dozen or more hills of pole-beans, 

 there are usually two or three low-minded plants 

 that will not climb the poles, but go groveling upon 

 the ground, wandering off among the potato- vines or 

 cucumbers, departing utterly from the traditions 

 of their race, becoming shiftless and vagrant. When 

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