Sept, i, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
33 i 
Again The Sad Penguin. 
In discussing the penguins, Mr. Moonan does 
not seem to consider that when any animal, in¬ 
cluding man, is adapted to its environment it 
is naturally happy. This applies equally to 
Eskimo or penguin, and to each the long night, 
fierce gales, ice, snow and privation are not 
hardships as we would look upon them, but part 
of their natural surroundings, things to which 
they are accustomed from birth. The fur seal 
of the Galapagos, under a tropical sun, is not a 
whit happier than his relative of the foggy, wind¬ 
swept Pribilofs; in fact, if any animal may prop¬ 
erly be called happy, it is the northern fur seal, 
and no creature on the face of the earth seems 
to have a better time, nor to enjoy life more 
keenly than a young fur seal. Fog and gale are 
to him no hardships, each has its charm; the 
pelting rain and glowing sun are equally dis¬ 
agreeable, and to escape them he takes to water. 
The Eskimo of both coasts are from all reports 
a particularly jolly lot, and had no proper idea 
of their hard fate until misfortune came upon 
them in the shape of civilized man. I do not 
know where Mr. Moonan gets the idea that they 
are unhappy; friends who have lived among 
them and accounts I have read agree that the 
reverse is the case. 
When one is on lookout off Cape Horn and 
out of the mist and darkness comes the call of 
a king penguin, sounding for all the world like 
* * * * the bubbling cry 
Of some strong swimmer in his agony, 
it requires little imagination to suppose the bird 
is unhappy. But when next day the fog lifts 
and you see a string of penguins making for a 
bed of kelp, gamboling exactly like a school of 
small porpoises, they do not seem sad. 
It is unfortunately the fashion to ascribe to 
other animals the thoughts and feelings of man; 
to use the helpless creature as mirrors to re¬ 
flect the ideas of the observer. And so be¬ 
cause Mr. Bernacchi thought the penguins ought 
to be sad, they were sad; Moseley, Kidder, 
Nordenskjold, Bickerton and my friend Capt. 
Cleveland saw no evidence of sadness. 
Similarly heartrending accounts of the agonies 
undergone by fur seals have been written by 
those not accquainted with them, when the fact 
is that a pod of fur seals halted before the 
clubbers will snap and snarl at one another ex¬ 
actly as if by themselves on the hauling ground. 
They have no dread of death, for they are not 
acquainted with it in the form of clubs, but they 
object vigorously to having their toes stepped 
on. And so the survivors, too small or too large 
to be taken for skins, may scurry back to the sea 
or stop fifty yards away, watching the slaughter 
of their comrades, fanning themselves with flippers 
wet with their blood. For blood in itself has 
no terror; it is shed too freely in the incessant 
fights of the old seals to be associated with 
death. An old bull is not a whit more disturbed 
by having the body of a freshly skinned pup 
flung at him than by a clod of earth. 
All this may not seem germane to the sad¬ 
ness of the penguins, but it is adduced to show 
that we must not judge other animals by our¬ 
selves and think that the same causes will pro¬ 
duce the same form of mind in them as in us. 
It will not do to follow Eve’s reasoning as ex¬ 
pressed by Mark Twain in Adam’s Diary, and 
say that because any animal looks sad it is sad. 
The mental processes of the so-called lower 
animals are probably somewhat like those of a 
small child, and as a child will cry one moment 
and laugh the next, so the duck just missed by 
the sportsman will be feeding peacefully five 
minutes later, not reflecting upon its escape from 
instant death. 
It may be well enough as a matter of literary 
effect to call animals or objects sad or happy; 
but when it comes to a statement of facts, it 
is quite another matter, and I wish to be classed 
among those who protest against this being 
done. F. A. L. 
Birds of the Cambridge Region. 
From the days of the landing of the Pilgrims 
to the present time, eastern Massachusetts has 
proved a favorite ground for students of orni¬ 
thology. Wood in his “New England Pros¬ 
pects,” Morton, in his “New English Canaan,” 
and Josselyn in his “New England Rarities Dis¬ 
covered” and “Two - Voyages to New England” 
have given us interesting records that take us 
back to the 17th century—-some of them almost 
to its beginning. Much later Nuttall wrote in 
SCREECH OWL. 
Photo from life by James Sanger, East Aurora, N. Y. 
“Soon as eve closes, the loud-hooting owl. 
That loves the turbulent and gusty night, 
Perches aloft upon the recking elm 
And halloes to the moon.” 
—Hurdis: The Favorite Village. 
Cambridge his “Manual of the Ornithology of 
the United States and Canada,” and his interest 
in birds impressed itself on the youth of the 
place, so that the Cabots and Dr. T. M. Brewer 
of the next generation were bird students; and 
they were followed directly by the men of the 
present day, who long ago founded the Nuttall 
Ornithological Club. 
It seems natural enough then that Mr. Wm. 
Brewster should have taken up the orni¬ 
thology of a small section of eastern Massa¬ 
chusetts, and should have produced a vol¬ 
ume on the subject which has rarely been 
equalled for the interest which it possesses in its 
special field. Mr. Brewster is one of our most 
eminent ornithologists, but he is much better 
known—because so many more people are inter¬ 
ested in the subject—as a keen sportsman and 
as the President of the Massachusetts Fish and 
Game Protective Association. From boyhood 
he has been an ardent gunner and a not less 
ardent student of birds, and most of his life has 
been devoted to this delightful subject. 
The present volume is No. IV. of the Memoirs 
of the Nuttall Ornithological Society. It is a 
handsome quarto of 425 pages, and is illustrated 
with four plates and three maps. It was pub¬ 
lished by the Nuttall Ornithological Club, July, 
1906. The Cambridge Region, to which the ob¬ 
servations included in the volume apply, treats 
of the territory about Cambridge over which 
ornithologists and collectors living in or very 
near Cambridge have been accustomed to 
journey within a day. The irregular area as 
shown on Mr. Brewster’s map is bounded on the 
south by the Charles River, on the west by 
Hobb's Brook, the Reservoir and the westerly 
line of the town of Lexington, on the north 
and east by the northeasterly boundary of 
Lexington, the northerly boundary of Arlington, 
taking in Mystic Pond and running south along 
the Mystic River about to where Alewife Brook 
joins it, and thence southeasterly to Craigie’s 
Bridge on the Charles River. 
Within this area, there are many localities 
which have become historic to ornithologists. 
It is impossible to mention them, or, in fact, to 
say much in detail of Mr. Brewster’s very beau¬ 
tiful book. He treats of the species of which 
there are definite and certain record within the 
region, and these species number 249, including 
a record of the black vulture added after the 
book was printed. In the case of each species, 
the bird’s Latin name is given, followed by the 
English name, and by its relation to the region 
as winter resident, summer resident, transient 
visitor, and so on; then follows the bird’s sea¬ 
sonal occurrence, with the point where the obser¬ 
vation was made and the names of the observers. 
The detailed remarks which close the record 
often run to several pages and are full of in¬ 
terest. Besides the birds numbered and treated 
of in the large type, other species, likely to have 
occurred, but not definitely recorded are men¬ 
tioned in small type, and here are included some 
introduced birds. In the records of his personal 
observation, which go back for forty years or 
more, Mr. Brewster points out many faunal 
changes that have taken place and sets down 
many matters of great interest. A bird may 
have originally been abundant and for some rea¬ 
son have been reduced—perhaps almost to the 
point of extermination—and then by a change of 
conditions may have again become abundant, 
and even have greatly increased in numbers. 
Of the birds mentioned in the small type, one 
is the heath hen, long ago extinct in the Cam¬ 
bridge Region, of which something was written 
in the Forest and Stream recently. It is in¬ 
teresting to read Mr. Brewster’s reference to 
this bird as formerly abundant on the site of 
Boston, and the testimony by Mrs. Eliza Cabot, 
which he gives on this subject. 
“It is probable that Wood refers to. this 
Grouse when he speaks of the ‘Heathcoke’ in his 
poetical enumeration of ‘such kinds of Fowle 
as the Countrey affoords.’ The word occurs in. 
the following line: ‘The Turky-Phesant, 
Heathcocke, Partridge rare.’ In the following 
text he says: ‘Pheasons be very rare, but 
Heathcockes, and Partridges be common; hee 
that is a husband, and will be stirring betime, 
may kill halfe a dozen in a morning.’ Fie adds: 
’The Partridge be bigger than they be in Eng¬ 
land, the flesh of the Heathcockes is red. and 
the flesh of the Partridge white.’ This indicates 
that his ‘Heathcocke’ must have been the Heath 
Hen, and his Partridge the Ruffed Grouse. 
What his ‘Pheason’ was, we can only conjecture. 
Apparently he was not personally familiar with 
the bird, and he probably learned of it through 
the Indians, who may have had the Spruce 
Grouse in mind, or, perhaps, from white men 
