WAYS OF NATURE 



enemies and from their prey, as we are told ; but the 

 animals themselves do not know this, though they 

 may act as if they did. Young terns and gulls in- 

 stinctively squat upon the beach, where their colors 

 so harmonize with the sand and pebbles that the 

 birds are virtually invisible. Young partridges do 

 the same in the woods, where the eye cannot tell the 

 reddish tuft of down from the dry leaves. How many 

 gulls and terns and partridges were sacrificed before 

 Nature learned this trick ! 



I regard the lower animals as incapable of taking 

 the step from the fact to the principle. They have 

 perceptions, but not conceptions. They may recog- 

 nize a certain fact, but any deduction from that fact 

 to be applied to a different case, or to meet new 

 conditions, is beyond them. Wolves and foxes soon 

 learn to be afraid of poisoned meat : just what gives 

 them the hint it would be hard to say, as the sur- 

 vivors could not know the poison's deadly effect from 

 experience; their fear of it probably comes from 

 seeing their fellows suffer and die after eating it, or 

 maybe through that mysterious means of communi- 

 cation between animals to which I have referred in 

 a previous article. The poison probably changes the 

 odor of the meat, and this strange smell would 

 naturally put them on their guard. 



We do not expect rats to succeed in putting a bell 

 on the cat, but if they were capable of conceiving 

 such a thing, that would establish their claim to be 

 140 



