146 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
at last I found out by liappening along when it was be- 
ing done. And what do you think it was? You would 
not guess till doomsday, so I'll tell you. It was a bird — 
one with as much brains and "horse sense" as some hu- 
mans, I think. What in Texas we call a "road-runner," 
a bird witli long, stilt-like legs, long wings, long beak 
and dun-colored plumage, that I've seen keep the trail 
ahead of my horse for miles, never once taking wing; 
hence the name "road-runner." For some reason the bird 
js the mortal enemy of the rattlesnake, and in its long 
journeys over the prairies keeps a wary lookout for its 
foe. I once had an opportunity, as before remarked, of 
seeing what it does on discovering him. Behind a little 
clump of sage bushes I heard the low, querulous note 
made by the bird when alarmed, and dismounting I 
crept up and peeped over. Sure enough, a road-runner 
had just discovered a rattler asleep in the sun, and M^as 
circling around it with drooping wings and neck dis- 
tended. After a while it ran of? a few yards to a prickly 
pear bush and quickly returned with a leaf covered with 
its needle-like spines, which it laid on the circle, and then 
continued the process until it had buTlt a broad wall of 
spines around the snake. Then it flew over and let a leaf 
fall on the snake's back, which sprang up, only to impale 
itself on the spines. For several minutes it writhed and 
thrashed about, the road-runner meantime looldng im- 
passively _ on, until at last, stung to madness, it struck 
its fangs into its own body and died of its own venom. 
Charles B. Todd. 
[Mr. Todd sends us a letter written to him by Mr. Case, 
in which Mr. Case says: "The killing of a rattlesnake 
by a road-runner, as described by you, was witnessed by 
me during the year 1877, while driving sheep in Mex- 
ico, between the towns of Lampasas and New Laredo."] 
Reason and Instinct. 
Some recent articles in Forest and Stream under 
this heading and also of "Animal Intelligence" have 
moved me to "speak out in meetin' " and tell some yarns 
which bear on all these subjects. Without going to the 
dictionaries for definitions, I, very egotistically, prefer 
to give my own, just as though the subject was entirely 
newj even at the risk of being classed with those who 
are said to "rush in where angels fear to tread." Yet if 
a fellow has not the courage to do this there would be 
no chance for the other fellow to whack him, and what 
would Donnybrook Fair amount to without a fight? 
Man loves fight, the Peace Society to the contrary not- 
withstanding, and nevertheless. "It needs no ghost to 
come from the grave to tell us this;" we see it all around, 
from the boyish snowballing to the desire for actual com- 
bat, either in war or in the prize-ring. When we are de- 
nied these outlets for our pugnacity we just sit down 
and challenge the other fellow to controvert our opin- 
ions in some publication. Here we always win, we be- 
ing umpire as well as contestant, and that is satisfac- 
tory. 
With this as a preface the ball is opened. Reason re- 
quires thought, and to think is the prerogative of intelli- 
gence, and there you are. There are plants so sensitive 
that they close their flowers at the slightest touch; the 
so-called "lower" forms of animal life, the sea-anemone, 
clam and oyster, will quickly shut up if touched, just as 
a man will shut his eye if it is touched or threatened, the 
instinct of preservation does it, because reason could not 
get there on schedule time, if it ever did, The young 
bee comes from the hive, circles about to get the bearings 
of its home, and goes to find honey and store it up for 
a winter of which it can know nothing. If it comes out 
early in the spring it works aboitt three months and dies 
with its wings worn to tatters in providing food for a 
later brood, which will winter on the honey. That's in- 
stinct. 
Instinct in Man. 
Reasoning men do the same thing; I know hundreds 
of them who are to-day working to amass honey, for 
what? Heirs who will "blow it in" for what the father 
would never have spent a cent for, or to be wasted in lit- 
igation; they want their boys to begin where they left 
off; one in a thousand does it. That is instinct in the 
form of egotism. "My boy shall not grub as I have 
done," and he will not. Yet why shouldn't he? This 
question is an American one, and not calculated for the 
longitude of Europe and entailed estates. 
Nine times out of ten the inheritance of large amounts 
of money wrecks a young man who might be well 
equipped for the battle of life but for this handicap; 
it thwarts nature's law of the survival of the fittest; he 
may have been fitted for the fight, but saw no reason for 
entering it when all that the battle offered was his al- 
ready. Such cases are too common to cite instances. 
Why should a squirrel labor to gather nuts when his 
father has laid up a great store? The incentive to labor 
is necessity, and few men would work if this were not so. 
With the few who would it is the instinct of the bee; they 
must be busy; they cannot lie on the bank and sleep with 
a fish-line tied to a toe and await results. Those of our 
race who can do this are the happiest of all men. They 
have no ambition beyond the day, there is- no nervous 
strain when stocks go up or down, and they are content. 
Will you say that they enjoy a mere animal existence and 
have not reasoning powers, because they are ignorant of 
books and the stock quotations of Wall Street? Not a bit 
of it. Your Maine, Adirondack or Western guide seldom 
sees a newspaper and is content to hve outside of our 
bustling civilization and can tell you the reason why he 
knows that a buck and two does crossed the trail within 
a few hours. His mind has had different training from 
yours and you are surprised at his knowledge. He can 
explain these things in your own tongue. Let us see 
how our friends who cannot speak, even if they some- 
times try to articulate, communicate with each other. 
How Dogs Communicate. 
Shakespeare, who had a knowledge of the minds of 
men far beyond that of any writer before him, or since, 
said, "Winter's Tale," act v., sc. ii.: 
" There was speech in th'eir dumbness, language in their very gesture." 
If those who deny reasoning powers to the dog can 
be pinned to Whately's proposition that "instinct is a 
blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of 
any consideration on the part of the agent, of the end to 
which the action leads," then we have them where we 
want them, and having them there, let us "soc et tu 
'em.'" 
The man who denies reason to the dog has never 
trained or studied a dog; he has never seen the long- 
legged, big-kneed, awkward, slouching pup develop into 
the handsome, graceful, brainy hunting dog; he has never 
seen the pup that "cut his lucky" for the home headquarters 
at- the first bark of a gun change to the dog that wagged 
his steering gear loose and threatened entire dismem- 
berment of his spine in the excess of his delight at the 
sight of a shooting coat or gun; he has never seen the 
fool pup that would "set" nothing but a bone quarter in 
accurate lines against the wind and then, if working with 
the wind,^ go looyds. or more ahead and quarter toward 
his handler in order to get the wind; he has never seen 
the same flabby pup so develop in his knowledge of birds 
that he could, and would, with scarce a word from his 
master, hunt all of the likely places for birds, picking 
them "by instinct" (I don't think) with as perfect accu- 
racy as does his master by the exercise of his reasoning 
power; he has never looked into the reproachful eye of 
a disgusted dog that has been holding a bunch of birds 
for him that he allowed to depart in peace because of the 
game law. To be sure, I never did own a dog that was 
properly impressed with the importance of the game 
laws, nor that was disposed to observe the same, but if 
this tendency to ignore the game and fish laws was made 
a prima facie case against the possession of "reasoning 
power," an immense number of our so-called sportsmen 
would have to prove an alibi or be left with nothing but 
instinct with wdiich to furnish their mental garret. 
No man Who has worked dogs in the field can believe 
that the fine points of finding and retrieving game by 
the bird dog are but "blind tendencies to some mode of 
action, independent of any considtyation," on the part of 
th^ dog, "of the end to which the action leads." He 
knows that the dog works it out in his brain. 
A ravine filled with a tangle of grapeviiies, black- 
berry briers and other wild growth ran back of my gar- 
den. In the garden was a low trelhs, about ift. high, 
over which trailed a thick growth of dewberry vines, the 
running blackberry. Each year a rabbit came and reared 
her young in the garden, nibbled the cabbage and tur- 
nips a little, and I had great fun in watching the family 
at play, chasing each other and having a grand romp 
when my terrier Joker was in the house; and there 
was never a cat allowed on my place. Joker also had his 
fun with the rabbits at times, and they seemed to like it, 
for they felt secure in their briery strongholds. Knowing 
that he could not catch one, I let him go it. One day I 
watched him a long time, up and down the rows of 
corn, among the tomato vines, jumping in the air occa- 
sionally to see better, and yelping wirii excitement. He 
stopped, looked at the vines where possibly he saw or 
smelt the game, and trotted off to the hatchery and I 
followed. He hunted around, asked to have the dooi; 
opened and found, the foreman's dog Rush asleep in 
the workshop. Joker pulled his ears, danced about, 
trotted off and looked back with a bark and a "wig-wag" 
until Rush understood, arose, stretched and followed 
Joker into the garden; thus reinforced, they dug under 
the dewberry trellis and drove the rabbits from one cover 
to another. Knowing that they could not hurt the bun- 
nies, I let the dogs have their fun and exercise. Did 
Joker ask Rush to follow him, and did Rush understand? 
I think so. 
In the early 50's I was in the lead mines at Potosi, in 
the southwest corner of Wisconsin. My partner, Charley 
Guyon, was at the windlass and I was in the shaft with 
pick and shovel. I heard a dog barking, and soon Guyon 
called out: "Come up; there's a fool dog here acting 
queerly and I can't drive him off." I got into the bucket 
and went up. The dog was a small one of that short- 
haired, no particular breed called a "fice" by the French 
Canadians, of whom Guyon was one. The dog turned 
his attention to me, barked at my face, pulled my trous- 
ers, went a few steps away, barked and "wig-wagged." 
"Charley," said I, "this dog wants us to follow him; he's 
got a rabbit in a hole or there's trouble somewhere." 
"No," he answered, "that's a fool fice that belongs to 
a man named Johnson, over in British Hollow, he was 
here yesterday when it was your turn in the shaft, ^and 
he's chopping off west there, somewhere." 
All this time the dog kept pleading with us to follow 
him, and I told Guyon: "That dog wants us to go 
witli him, and I'm going." We went, the dog in the 
lead occasionally turning back to see if we were follow- 
ing, and expressing approval with his tail. A tramp of 
alaout a mile brought us to a clearing, and there was 
Johnson, pinned under a fallen tree, with a broken leg 
and internal injuries from which he died a week later. 
Did that dog reason that his master needed the help 
which only men could give, and did he come to ask us 
to give that help? Instances like these could be mul- 
tiplied ad infinitum. 
Memory in Fishes. 
While the possession of memory does not iiecesLsarily 
imply reason, it is a quality that may be transmitted, es- 
pecially that of fear, which becomes caution in the young. 
Fishes are near the bottom round of the ladder ir ani- 
mal life and intelligence, as we regard it. They have not 
the sensitiveness of some reptiles and dp not compare 
-with the frog in nervous organization, yet they have a 
brain, which must be of use in selecting food and avoid- 
ing danger. 
I made an assertion to the effect that a fish that had 
been hooked might transmit caution to its progeny — 
Forest and Stream, April 9, 1898 — and this statement 
was followed by columns of argument by Col. E. P. 
Alexander, "Hermit," "Coahoma" and "Von W." Hav-, 
ing stirred up the fight I sat like the red-headed boy on 
the rafters, aiifi enjoyed the scraps but never "took sides." 
Let's see. 
Col. Alexander says: "The fish pricked with the hook, 
rarely seems to mind it. He is ready to bite again in 
five minutes. He has no clear conception of man and 
his works, or that he has escaped a great danger." 
It is true that a hook causes a fish but little pain, and 
that if it escapes easily it will often bite again. But it is 
not the hook that the fish dreads so much as the pro- 
longed struggle while held fast, and if it breaks away 
in sight of the landing net it has learned something; a 
few repetitions of this will be so impressed upon it that 
it will be cautious, and mental qualities may be trans- 
mitted as well physical ones. In proof of this, let's take 
the trout in different streams. Most anglers have found 
trout waters far away where the trout were so innocent as 
to vie with each other in their haste to take anything like 
a fly, and where angling seemed merely trout murder, no 
excitement; no wondering if the cast would bring a rise. 
The result was sure. Fear and discretion were unknown 
to the fish. 
Then take the trout of Castalia Springs, O., of Cale- 
donia Creek, N. Y,, and of some Long Island waters, 
and note the difference. Unless the fly is about right in 
size and color and is presented in an attractive manner 
on the proper day, or time of day, the angler might as 
well reel up, for hardly a yearling will notice his cast. 
On Caledonia Creek, some fourteen miles south of Roch- 
ester, a man might fish a week with the large flies used in 
the Adirondacks and not get a rise. The stream has 
been whipped for over a century by the best of fly-fishers, 
and all tJie rash trout have been caught out, and only 
the cautious ones left to transmit their caution. That's 
heredity. 
There seems to be no other hypothesis to account for 
the wariness of trout in well-fished streams except the 
experience of ancestors handed down in the quality of 
fear. It may not be reason in the case of trout; call it 
instinct, if you will ; but the thing is there, as thousands 
of fly-fishers will attest. The "instinct" which teaches 
all wild animals to .shun man and his lures does not ex- 
ist in the trout, which live where man seldom comes; 
they welcorne his artificial flies with open mouths at 
first; but, twenty generations later, they are more cau- 
tious, if man has persistently sought their capture. If 
their forebears did not reason they had memory, and 
memory presupposes thought. 
What the Birds Think. 
Col. Alexander says: "For every wounded bird 
which survives and has further progeny there are hun- 
dreds unhurt to whom the explosion of a gun was, after 
all, only a harmless sound, and one which in certain cir- 
cumstances they will easily come to disregard entirely. 
Birds and fish do not know what death is, nor do they 
figure out that missing ones are dead. The whole con- 
ception assumes for all animals reasoning powers which 
thousands of more conclusive phenomena show that they 
do not possess." 
Perhaps fish may not know what death is, but a bird 
has a higher intelligence, and when it sees its companions 
stricken down and perhaps feels the stinging shot, it is 
not for man to say that it draws no conclusions from the 
flash and sound of the gun, and the glimpse of a man 
behind it. Once the Indian could kill birds and animals 
with his arrow and they knew the range of its power and 
kept just out of it. Then the white man came with his 
musket, good for 75yds. with ball or 20 with shot, and 
the wild creatures became wilder, and now the sight or 
scent of a man a mile off alarms some of them. Is this 
an instinct; implanted in the first deer o? i§ it the educa- 
tion qf the species ; through heredity? 
My young wood ducks, hatched in confinement, feared 
man, dogs, cats and hawks, but would betray no fear of 
a cow, sheep or horse. This looks to me like an inherited 
trait from ancestors which had learned to fear man and 
was probably instinctive in the younp. 
Crows communicate with each other, as their various 
notes show; let one give the "look-out" call from a tree 
while others are feeding qn the ground, and see the re- 
sult. A" crow not only knows the language of its kin- 
dred, but it also knows all the talk of the woods. A 
squirrel may rustle leaves or give its. cheepy call and the 
crow pays no attention; but let little bushy-tail begin to 
cough and bark at something which he regards as an 
intrusion and the crow takes a position where he can ob- 
serve operations with safety to himself. Let some black- 
birds have an owl at bay in a bush, in daylight, and the 
crow knows their language and is wise enough to keep 
out of that scrapping match, for he has known blackbirds 
to persecute a poor crow for just taking a few eggs, when 
there was no evidence that one- egg belonged to the per- 
secutors. 
The crow is a wise fellow. He has lived in his native 
land, where the hand of every boy and man has been 
against him, and where the so-called game birds have 
been killed off. Crow is not a marketable bird; inen 
are said to have eaten it, but "not to hanker after it;" 
but if the bird was edible and considered "game" he 
would not be exterminated in settled places as the grouse 
has been — he knows more than the grouse. 
Unless when driven by hunger in winter to feed in 
barnyards let the man go forth to .shoot the crow. He 
would not get one in a montli, unless by accident. It 
has been shown that the crow can count up to five when 
that number of men have gone into a blind and only four 
have come out, and the bait was in range of the last 
man's gun. The crow knew that there was a man miss- 
ing. 
Let the deer-stalker follow his game with the wind in 
his face until he is near to it and then hear the alarm 
note of the crow; he then knows that his game is alert, as 
the deer knows crow talk and is off. This looks like 
reason on the part of the deer. 
How the Rat Adapts itself to Changes. 
Let's take a look at our unwelcome guest, the rat. 
Does he reason? I'm sure he does. Laying aside the 
more or less probable yarns about his getting molasses 
from a jug with his tail and other stories, here are some 
facts: Modern builders and householders have fought 
the, rat and tried to deprive him of food and shelter in 
the land .where he was born and where he may consider 
that he has. some rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness. They have put obstructions in the way of 
the *aif-that might have discouraged our feeble native 
black '?ellow, who was driven to the wilderness years ago 
by the formidable brown or "Norway" rat, which is now 
a resident in every land where ships go. He is the "fit- 
test/' •aii4 he "fit" all other rats out of business. He is 
sagacious . and can reason; a living example of physical 
courage and brain power. He knows no instinctive rou- 
