WAYS OF NATURE 



If Mrs. Martin's statements are literally true, — 

 if she has not the failing, so common among women 

 observers, of letting her feeling and her fancies color 

 her observations, — then her story shows how the 

 pressure of hunger will develop the wit of a crow. 



But the story goes one step beyond my credence. 

 It virtually makes the crow a tool-using animal, and 

 Darwin knew of but two animals, the man-like ape 

 and the elephant, that used anything like a tool or 

 weapon to attain their ends. How could the crow gain 

 the knowledge or the experience which this trick 

 implies? What could induce it to make the first 

 experiment of breaking an egg with a falling stone 

 but an acquaintance with physical laws such as man 

 alone possesses ? The first step in this chain of causa- 

 tion it is easy to conceive of any animal taking ; 

 namely, the direct application of its own powers or 

 weapons to the breaking of the shell. But the second 

 step, — the making use of a foreign substance or 

 object in the way described, — that is what staggers 

 one. 



Our own crow has great cunning, but it is only 

 cunning. He is suspicious of everything that looks 

 like design, that suggests a trap, even a harmless 

 string stretched around a corn-field. As a natural 

 philosopher he makes a poor show, and the egg or the 

 shell that he cannot open with his own beak he leaves 

 behind. Yet even his alleged method of dropping 

 clams upon the rocks to break the shells does not 

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