REASON IN A CROW. 
772 
our island, the swift is known to inhabit the whole of the European 
continent ; and has also been noticed at the Cape of Good Hqpe, and 
the Carolinas in North America. Hence, most likely, it is a general 
inhabitant of both the old and new continent. 
Power or Reason in a Crow. 
It is well knowm that crows feed upon several kinds of shell-fish^ 
when within their reach, and that they contrive to break the shell by 
raising the shell-fish to a great height, and letting it drop upon a stone 
or rock This may perhaps be considered as pure instinct, directing the 
animal to the proper means of acquiring its food. But what is to be 
thought of the following fact, w hich was communicated to the editors 
of the Encyclopedia Britannica, by a gentleman whose veracity, they 
say, is unquestionable, and who, being totally unacquainted with the 
theory of philosophers, has, of course, no favourite hypothesis to 
support? 
In the spring of 1791, a pair of cows made their nest in a tree, of 
which there are several planted round his garden, and in his morning 
walks he had often been amused by witnessing furious combats 
between them and a cat. One morning the battle raged more fiercely 
than usual, till at last the cat gave way, and took shelter under a 
hedge, as if to wait a more favourable opportunity of retreating to 
the house. The crows continued for a short time to make a threaten- 
ing noise ; but perceiving that on the ground they could do nothing 
more than threaten, one of them lifted a stone from the middle of 
the garden, and perched with it on a tree planted in the hedge, where 
she sat watching the motions of the enemy of her young. As she 
crept along under the hedge, the crow accompanied her by flying from 
branch to branch and from tree to tree ; and when at last puss ven- 
tured to quit her hiding place, the crow, leaving the tree, and hovering 
over her in the air, let the stone drop from on high on her back. 
That the crow on this occasion reasoned, is self-evident ; and it seems 
to be little less evident that the ideas employed in her reasoning were 
enlarged beyond those which she had received from her senses. By 
her senses she may have perceived that the shell of a fish is broken 
by a fall ; hut could her senses inform her that a cat would be wound- 
ed or driven off the field by the fall of a stone ? No ; from the effect 
of the one fall, preserved in her memory, she must have inferred the 
other by her power of reasoning. 
Cock-Crowing. 
There is this remarkable circumstance about the crow'ing of 
cocks ; at several different times in the course of a night, a general 
crowing may be heard from all quarters where there are cocks, — the 
first that begins, apparently setting all the rest off ; and this fact is 
remarkably striking in all places where numbers of cocks, are bred 
for the purpose of fighting. As far as I can observe, except at the 
dawn of the day, these crowing matches happen at very irregular and 
uncertain periods. The ancients, however, seem to have regarded 
