FOREST AND STREAM. 


Jim’s mode of progress during our trip was 
by short flights from pole to pole of the tele- 
phone line or fence posts, trees and the roofs of 
houses by the roadside. On several occasions he 
also landed on my hat, where he doubtless en- 
joyed the free ride and at the same time reas- 
sured himself of his master’s identity which the 
meeting of so many strangers seemed at times 
to make doubtful. One old gentleman whom we 
met on the road was so astonished by such 
strange conduct in a crow that he begged for a 
short account of his life, and in the end kindly 
shared his luncheon with Jim. Pleasant rela- 
tions with me being thus established led to an 
interchange of cards, and as he gave his name he 
added “it may interest you to know that I am the 
last of the living jurors who passed _ sentence 
upon John Brown.” That, through Jim Crow, 
should have been led to meet one so closely as- 
sociated with John Brown seemed a coincidence 
worth noting. 
If such reading of Jim’s acts and motives 
should seem to be a surrender to the latter-day 
propensity to over-humanize, in dealing with the 
psychological phenomena in the lower animals, it 
should be borne in mind that his little life of 
three months length has been spent almost en- 
tirely in close companionship with man by whom 
he has been fondled, chided, fed and been shel- 
tered from weather and the dangers of enemies, 
both natural and assumed. This, too, has all 
been done according to human methods and it 
is hardly a matter of wonder that Jim should, at 
least in a measure, react in kind. I am quite 
sure that no crow ever evinced its affection for 
one of its own race after the fashion of Jim’s 
demonstrations of love for his man master. His 
bewitching deviltry and his clean, glossy black 
head having compelled the bestowal of frequent 
so-called kisses, it no longer strikes me as re- 
markable that he should so often perch upon my 
arm, insert the tip of his beak between my lips 
and sit motionless for minutes at a time whisper- 
ing the most endearing epithets no doubt that 
his limited vocabulary affords. 
As to crows in general, Jim scorns the race 
and will have little to do with them. He some- 
times joins a passing flock but only for the pur- 
pose of attacking them, and hurries back to his 
master when they turn upon him in squads or 
even battalions, as they are apt to do. One 
morning he went with us to gather mushrooms 
in a large sod field, and great was the confusion 
that he caused among his wild brothers that 
swerved from their course and flew round and 
round, as if to find out what there could be so 
good to eat as to lead a crow to brave the so- 
ciety of human being and dogs. Jim found the 
mushrooms much to his taste. He no sooner dis- 
covered that they were the object of our search 
A BEAKED WH 
ALE—KISKA ISLAND. 
than he, too, gave them his most lively atten- 
tion. He would waddle or hop or fly from one 
to another, tear them to pieces, gobble great 
chunks, and when quite full would cast them up 
and begin all over again. 
His aversion for his kind leads him to engage 
in furious bouts with his own image. ‘ When a 
mirror is placed before him’or more frequently 
when he alights on the sill of a closed window 
and catches sight of his reflected body he at- 
tacks it with ruffled feathers and every evidence 
of enmity until he finds that no impression is to 
be made and the fight becomes stale and unpro- 
fitable, 
He is quick and ready in his deductions. One 
of the delights of his uncaged hours is to come 
into my room, which is in the wing of the house 
and has opposite windows on the north and 
south sides. As his presence there means unre- 
mitting attention to guard against the destruction 
of books and papers or the theft and conceal- 
ment of objects of value, I was driven a few 
days ago to exclude him by closing the south 
window, the side of the house that he mostly 
frequents. He arrived after a little while, as 
was anticipated, and landing on the sill looked 
steadily in for a moment, then flew hurriedly 
around to the opposite window, which he saw 
from his first position, was still open. 
When we are off on an outing together his 
familiarity is without bounds. He walks and 
climbs over all parts of my body in absolute con- 
fidence and fearlessness; but when we return to 
the near surroundings of the house and the time 
arrives for him to be put to bed in his cage, he 
becomes as shy and as sly as a hawk and must 
be tempted indoors and caught, else allowed to 
fast until willing to exchange his liberty for beef 
or bread. 
Some of Jim’s actions are no more to be pre- 
dicted than are the caprices of any other well- 
organized and complex intelligence. He was one 
day given a large crayfish, the first and only one 
he had ever seen, so far as we knew. It was 
placed before him on a large flat stone, and as 
is the habit of its kind, it raised on high its two 
large front defensive legs and moved off back- 
ward by means of the other locomotive members. 
Jim at once recognized danger in the big open 
nippers and skillfully avoiding them he clipped 
off, one after the other, all the walking legs and 
seized the body in his claws, as if about to make 
a dainty meal of it; but he had not allowed for 
the multiplex motion of the nippers, in one of 
which Jim’s toe was caught and must have been 
pinched with painful force, for he shook his foot 
‘vigorously and escaped in pain and disgust to a 
stone nearby. Here he lifted the wounded foot 
and examined it with the gravest solicitude and 
interest’ for some minutes. Apparently per- 
suaded at last that no very serious injury had be- 
fallen him, he put this foot down and made an 
equally careful examination of the other one, to 
which nothing had happened. 
So again I have been unable to fathom Jim’s 
conduct on the occasion of the frequent tragedies 
of the back yard, when the cook takes a chicken 
from the coop and wrings its neck or chops off 
its head, the cries of the chicken arouse in Jim 
a state of wild and noisiest protestation. He flies 
and flutters round about the cook, cawing and 
apparently pleading as if for his own life. Dur- 
ing the period of incoordinate hops and skips of 
the headless chicken Jim steps lightly about the 
scene of execution with an air of mixed awe and 
curiosity, Finally, when all is quiet, he ap- 
proaches with stealthy and cautious steps and 
gently pecks at the bit of fresh, red neck of the 
victim or perhaps sips a few drops of his still 
warm blood and then departs for new fields. 
Although addicted to probing many things and 
places that we should rather see him pass un- 
noticed, Jim is none the less, as regards his per- 
son, neat and cleanly. He is perfectly free from 
vermin, and when confined to his cage passes 
much of his time in righting the small accidents 
to his plumage made by snags and briers in the 
course of his flight through the bushes and 
trees. He combs the feathers of his head with 
his feet and in order to bring these distant parts 
together he lowers the wing slightly and passes 
the leg and foot from the rear over and above 
the shoulder; a most ungainly movement that al- 
ways provokes an exclamation of wonder and 
amusement from those who witness it. He takes 
his bath with great regularity and going to the 
pump plainly asks for it if it is not provided. He 
wades into the shallow pan, dips his head, rolls 
the water over his back, then squats with ex- 
panded wings and tail and with a great splutter 
throws the water all over himself and often over 
his too curious spectators as well. With heavy, 
wet wings he then flies to some neighboring 
sunny tree or roof and goes to preening until 
quite dry and comfortable. 
Jim’s sense of taste is fairly acute. He stops 
to try the flavor of every sort of berry or other 
fruit that comes in our way. Some he finds to 
be good and savory, while others he discards as 
of indifferent quality or positively unpleasant; 
but of all fruits the pokeberry most rejoice his 
heart and more than in metaphor makes of earth 
a rosy sphere to live upon. It was observed that 
from fifteen to twenty minutes sufficed for the 
coloring matter of this fruit to pass the entire 
length of the digestive tract. He rejected the su- 
mac berry as unfit for food, and it was curious to 
observe that he obtained a knowledge of the 
qualities of this fruit without swallowing but by 
simply crushing it at the end of his bill, and as 
