WAYS OF NATURE 



they were poisonous. It would be interesting to 

 know if anything eats the red berries of our wild 

 turnip or arum. I doubt if any bird or beast could 

 stand them. Wherefore, then, are they so brightly 

 colored ? I am also equally curious to know if any- 

 thing eats the fruit of the red and white baneberry 

 and the blue cohosh. 



The seeds of some wild fruit, such as the climb- 

 ing bitter-sweet, are so soft that it seems impossible 

 they should pass through the gizzard of a bird and 

 not be destroyed. 



The fruit of the sumac comes the nearest to being 

 a cheat of anything I know of in nature — a collec- 

 tion of seeds covered with a flannel coat with just a 

 perceptible acid taste, and all highly colored. Unless 

 the seed itself is digested, what is there to tempt the 

 bird to devour it, or to reward it for so doing ? 



In the tropics one sees fruits that do not become 

 bright colored on ripening, such as the breadfruit, 

 the custard apple, the naseberry, the mango. And 

 tropical foliage never colors up as does the foliage of 

 northern trees. 



VI. INSTINCT 



Many false notions seem to be current in the 

 popular mind about instinct. Apparently, some of 

 our writers on natural history themes would like 

 to discard the word entirely. Now instinct is not 

 opposed to intelligence; it is intelligence of the 

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