near his cabin. One morning he heard a strange cry in the direction of
the nest, and taking the path that led to it, he met the grouse
running toward him with one wing pressed close to her side, and
fighting off two robber crows with the other. Under the closed wing
the grouse was carrying an egg, which she had managed to save from the
ruin of her nest. The bird was coming to the hermit for succor. Now,
am I skeptical about such a story, put down in apparent good faith in
a book of natural history as a real occurrence, because I have never
seen the like? No; I am skeptical because the incident is so contrary
to all that we know about grouse and all other wild birds. Our belief
in nearly all matters takes the line of least resistance, and it is
easier for me to believe that the writer deceived himself, than that
such a thing ever happened. In the first place, a grouse could not
pick up an egg with her wing when crows were trying to rob her, and,
in the second place, she would not think far enough to do it if she
had the power. What was she going to do with the egg? Bring it to the
hermit for his breakfast? This last supposition is just as reasonable
as any part of the story. A grouse will not readily leave her
unfledged young, but she will leave her eggs when disturbed by man or
beast with apparent unconcern.
It is the rarest thing in the world that real observers see any of
these startling and exceptional things in nature. Thoreau saw none.
White saw none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir reports none,
Audubon none. It is always your untrained observer that has his poser,
his shower of frogs or lizards, or his hoop snakes, and the like. The
impossible things that country people see or hear of would make a book
of wonders. In some places fishermen believe that the loon carries its
egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say that they are in
a position to know. So they are. But opportunity is only half the
problem; the verifying mind is the other half. One of our writers of
popular nature books relates this curious incident of "animal surgery"
among wild ducks. He discovered two eider ducks swimming about a
fresh-water pond and acting queerly, "dipping their heads under water
and keeping them there for a minute or more at a time." He later
discovered that the ducks had large mussels attached to their tongues,
and that they were trying to get rid of them by drowning them. The
birds had discovered that the salt-water mussel cannot live in fresh
water. Now am I to accept this story without question because I find
it printed in a book? In the first place, is it not most remarkable
that if the ducks had discovered that the bivalves could not live in
fresh water, they should not also have discovered that they could not
live in the air? In fact, that they would die as soon in the air as in
the fresh water?[5] See how much trouble the ducks could have saved
themselves by going and sitting quietly upon the beach, or putting
their heads under their wings and going to sleep on the wave. Oysters
are often laid down in fresh water to "fatten" before being sent to
market, and probably mussels would thrive for a short time in fresh
water equally well. In the second place, a duck's tongue is a very
short and stiff affair, and is fixed in the lower mandible as in a
trough. Ducks do not protrude the tongue when they feed; they cannot
protrude it; and if a duck can crush a mussel-shell with its beak,
what better position could it have the bivalve in than fast to the
tongue between the upper and the lower mandible? The story is
certainly a very "fishy" one. In all such cases the mind follows the
line of least resistance. If the ducks were deliberately holding their
bills under water, it is easier to believe that they did it because
they thereby found some relief from pain, than that they knew the
bivalves would let go their hold sooner in fresh water than in salt or
than in the air. A duck's mouth held open and the tongue pinched by a
shell-fish would doubtless soon be in a feverish and abnormal
condition, which cool water would tend to alleviate. One is unable to
see how the ducks could have acquired the kind of human experimental
knowledge attributed to them. A person might learn such a secret, but
surely not a duck. In discovering and in eluding its enemies, and in
many other ways, the duck's wits are very sharp, but to attribute to
them a knowledge of the virtues of fresh water over salt in a certain
unusual emergency--an emergency that could not have occurred to the
race of ducks, much less to individuals often enough for a special
instinct to have been developed to meet it--is to make them entirely
human.
[5] I have tried the experiment on two ordinary clams, and
they both died on the third day.
The whole idea of animal surgery which the incident implies--such as
mending broken legs with clay, salving wounds with pitch, or resorting
to bandages or amputations--is preposterous. Sick or wounded animals
will often seek relief from pain by taking to the water or to the mud,
or maybe to the snow, just as cows will seek the pond or the bushes to
escape the heat and the flies, and that is about the extent of their
surgery. The dog licks his wound; it no doubt soothes and relieves it.
The cow licks her calf; she licks him into shape; it is her instinct
to do so. That tongue of hers is a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture
and flexibility. The cat always carries her kittens by the back of
the neck; it is her best way to carry them, though I do not suppose
this act is the result of experiment on her part.
A chimney swift has taken up her abode in my study chimney. At
intervals, day or night, when she hears me in the room, she makes a
sudden flapping and drumming sound with her wings to scare me away. It
is a very pretty little trick and quite amusing. If you appear above
the opening of the top of a chimney where a swift is sitting on her
nest, she will try to drum you away in the same manner. I do not
suppose there is any thought or calculation in her behavior, any more
than there is in her nest-building, or any other of her instinctive
doings. It is probably as much a reflex act as that of a bird when she
turns her eggs, or feigns lameness or paralysis, to lure you away from
her nest, or as the "playing possum" of a rose-bug or potato-bug when
it is disturbed.
One of the writers referred to above relates with much detail this
astonishing thing of the Canada lynx: He saw a pack of them trailing
their game--a hare--through the winter woods, not only hunting in
concert, but tracking their quarry. Now any candid and informed reader
will balk at this story, for two reasons: (1) the cat tribe do not
hunt by scent, but by sight,--they stalk or waylay their game; (2)
they hunt singly, they are all solitary in their habits, they are
probably the most unsocial of the carnivora,--they prowl, they
listen, they bide their time. Wolves often hunt in packs. I have no
evidence that foxes do, and if the cats ever do, it is a most
extraordinary departure. A statement of such an exceptional occurrence
should always put one on his guard. In the same story the lynx is
represented as making curious antics in the air to excite the
curiosity of a band of caribou, and thus lure one of them to its death
at the teeth and claws of the waiting hidden pack. This also is so
uncatlike a proceeding that no woodsman could ever credit it. Hunters
on the plains sometimes "flag" deer and antelope, and I have seen even
a loon drawn very near to a bather in the water who was waving a small
red flag. But none of our wild creatures use lures, or decoys, or
disguises. This would involve a process of reasoning quite beyond
them.
Many instances have been recorded of animals seeking the protection of
man when pursued by their deadly enemies. I heard of a rat which, when
hunted by a weasel, rushed into a room where a man was sleeping, and
took refuge in the bed at his feet. I heard Mr. Thompson Seton tell of
a young pronghorn buck that was vanquished by a rival, and so hotly
pursued by its antagonist that it sought shelter amid his horses and
wagons. On another occasion Mr. Seton said a jack rabbit pursued by a
weasel upon the snow sought safety under his sled. In all such cases,
if the frightened animal really rushed to man for protection, that
act would show a degree of reason. The animal must think, and weigh
the _pros_ and _cons_. But I am convinced that the truth about such
cases is this: The greater fear drives out the lesser fear; the animal
loses its head, and becomes oblivious to everything but the enemy that
is pursuing it. The rat was so terrified at the demon of a weasel that
it had but one impulse, and that was to hide somewhere. Doubtless had
the bed been empty, it would have taken refuge there just the same.
How could an animal know that a man will protect it on special
occasions, when ordinarily it has exactly the opposite feeling? A deer
hotly pursued by a hound might rush into the barn-yard or into the
open door of the barn in sheer desperation of uncontrollable terror.
Then we should say the creature knew the farmer would protect it, and
every woman who read the incident, and half the men, would believe
that that thought was in the deer's mind. When the hunted deer rushes
into the lake or pond, it does so, of course, with a view to escape
its pursuers, and wherever it seeks refuge this is its sole purpose. I
can easily fancy a bird pursued by a hawk darting into an open door or
window, not with the thought that the inmates of the house will
protect it, but in a panic of absolute terror. Its fear is then
centred upon something behind it, not in front of it.
When an animal does something necessary to its self-preservation, or
to the continuance of its species, it probably does not think about it
as a person would, any more than the plant or tree thinks about the
light when it bends toward it, or about the moisture when it sends
down its tap-root. Touch the tail of a porcupine ever so lightly, and
it springs up like a trap and your hand is stuck with quills. I do not
suppose there is any more thinking about the act, or any more
conscious exercise of will-power, than there is in a trap. An outward
stimulus is applied and the reaction is quick. Does not man wink, and
dodge, and sneeze, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and fall in love,
and do many other things without thought or will? I do not suppose the
birds think about migrating, as man does when he migrates; they simply
obey an inborn impulse to move south or north, as the case may be.
They do not think about the great lights upon the coast that blaze out
with a fatal fascination in their midnight paths. If they had
independent powers of thought, they would avoid them. But the
lighthouse is comparatively a new thing in the life of birds, and
instinct has not yet taught them to avoid it. To adapt means to an end
is an act of intelligence, but that intelligence may be inborn and
instinctive as in the animals, or it may be acquired and therefore
rational as in man.
"Surely," said a woman to me, "when a cat sits watching at a
mouse-hole, she has some image in her mind of the mouse in its hole?"
Not in any such sense as we have when we think of the same subject.
The cat has either seen the mouse go into the hole, or else she smells
him; she knows he is there through her senses, and she reacts to that
impression. Her instinct prompts her to hunt and to catch mice; she
doesn't need to think about them as we do about the game we hunt;
Nature has done that for her in the shape of an inborn impulse that is
awakened by the sight or smell of mice. We have no ready way to
describe her act as she sits intently by the hole but to say, "The cat
thinks there is a mouse there," while she is not thinking at all, but
simply watching, prompted to it by her inborn instinct for mice.
The cow's mouth will water at the sight of her food when she is
hungry. Is she thinking about it? No more than you are when your mouth
waters as your full dinner-plate is set down before you. Certain
desires and appetites are aroused through sight and smell without any
mental cognition. The sexual relations of the animals also illustrate
this fact.
We know that the animals do not think in any proper sense as we do, or
have concepts and ideas, because they have no language. To be sure, a
deaf mute thinks without language because a human being has the
intelligence which language implies, or which was begotten in his
ancestors by its use through long ages. Not so with the lower animals.
They are like very young children in this respect; they have
impressions, perceptions, emotions, but not ideas. The child
perceives things, discriminates things, knows its mother from a
stranger, is angry, or glad, or afraid, long before it has any
language or any proper concepts. Animals know only through their
senses, and this "knowledge is restricted to things present in time
and space." Reflection, or a return upon themselves in thought, of
this they are not capable. Their only language consists of various
cries and calls, expressions of pain, alarm, joy, love, anger. They
communicate with one another, and come to share one another's mental
or emotional states, through these cries and calls. A dog barks in
various tones and keys, each of which expresses a different feeling in
the dog. I can always tell when my dog is barking at a snake; there is
something peculiar in the tone. The hunter knows when his hound has
driven the fox to hole by a change in his baying. The lowing and
bellowing of horned cattle are expressions of several different
things. The crow has many caws, that no doubt convey various meanings.
The cries of alarm and distress of the birds are understood by all the
wild creatures that hear them; a feeling of alarm is conveyed to
them--an emotion, not an idea.
How could a crow tell his fellows of some future event, or of some
experience of the day? How could he tell him this thing is dangerous,
this is harmless, save by his actions in the presence of those things?
Or how tell of a newly found food supply save by flying eagerly to
it? A fox or a wolf could warn its fellow of the danger of poisoned
meat by showing alarm in the presence of the meat. Such meat would no
doubt have a peculiar odor to the keen scent of the fox or the wolf.
Animals that live in communities, such as bees and beavers, coöperate
with each other without language, because they form a sort of organic
unity, and what one feels all the others feel. One spirit, one
purpose, fills the community.
It is said on good authority that prairie-dogs will not permit weeds
or tall grass to grow about their burrows, as these afford cover for
coyotes and other enemies to stalk them. If they cannot remove these
screens, they will leave the place. And yet they will sometimes allow
a weed such as the Norse nettle or the Mexican poppy to grow on the
mound at the mouth of the den where it will afford shade and not
obstruct the view. At first thought this conduct may look like a
matter of calculation and forethought, but it is doubtless the result
of an instinct that has been developed in the tribe by the struggle
for existence, and with any given rodent is quite independent of
experience. It is an inherited fear of every weed or tuft of grass
that might conceal an enemy.
I am told that prairie wolves will dig up and eat meat that has been
poisoned and then buried, when they will not touch it if left on the
surface. In such a case the ranchmen think the wolf has been
outwitted; but the truth probably is that there was no calculation in
the matter; the soil drew out or dulled the smell of the poison and of
the man's hand, and so allayed the wolf's suspicions.
I suppose that when an animal practices deception, as when a bird
feigns lameness or a broken wing to decoy you away from her nest or
her young, it is quite unconscious of the act. It takes no thought
about the matter. In trying to call a hen to his side, a rooster will
often make believe he has food in his beak, when the pretended grain
or insect may be only a pebble or a bit of stick. He picks it up and
then drops it in sight of the hen, and calls her in his most
persuasive manner. I do not suppose that in such cases the rooster is
conscious of the fraud he is practicing. His instinct, under such
circumstances, is to pick up food and call the attention of the hen to
it, and when no food is present, he instinctively picks up a pebble or
a stick. His main purpose is to get the hen near him, and not to feed
her. When he is intent only on feeding her, he never offers her a
stone instead of bread.
We have only to think of the animals as habitually in a condition
analogous to, or identical with, the unthinking and involuntary
character of much of our own lives. They are creatures of routine.
They are wholly immersed in the unconscious, involuntary nature out of
which we rise, and above which our higher lives go on.
XI
THE LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE
The literary treatment of natural history themes is, of course, quite
different from the scientific treatment, and should be so. The former,
compared with the latter, is like free-hand drawing compared with
mechanical drawing. Literature aims to give us the truth in a way to
touch our emotions, and in some degree to satisfy the enjoyment we
have in the living reality. The literary artist is just as much in
love with the fact as is his scientific brother, only he makes a
different use of the fact, and his interest in it is often of a
non-scientific character. His method is synthetic rather than
analytic. He deals in general, and not in technical truths,--truths
that he arrives at in the fields and woods, and not in the laboratory.
The essay-naturalist observes and admires; the scientific naturalist
collects. One brings home a bouquet from the woods; the other,
specimens for his herbarium. The former would enlist your sympathies
and arouse your enthusiasm; the latter would add to your store of
exact knowledge. The one is just as shy of over-coloring or
falsifying his facts as the other, only he gives more than facts,--he
gives impressions and analogies, and, as far as possible, shows you
the live bird on the bough.
The literary and the scientific treatment of the dog, for instance,
will differ widely, not to say radically, but they will not differ in
one being true and the other false. Each will be true in its own way.
One will be suggestive and the other exact; one will be strictly
objective, but literature is always more or less subjective.
Literature aims to invest its subject with a human interest, and to
this end stirs our sympathies and emotions. Pure science aims to
convince the reason and the understanding alone. Note Maeterlinck's
treatment of the dog in a late magazine article, probably the best
thing on our four-footed comrade that English literature has to show.
It gives one pleasure, not because it is all true as science is true,
but because it is so tender, human, and sympathetic, without being
false to the essential dog nature; it does not make the dog _do_
impossible things. It is not natural history, it is literature; it is
not a record of observations upon the manners and habits of the dog,
but reflections upon him and his relations to man, and upon the many
problems, from the human point of view, that the dog must master in a
brief time: the distinctions he must figure out, the mistakes he must
avoid, the riddles of life he must read in his dumb dog way. Of
course, as a matter of fact, the dog is not compelled "in less than
five or six weeks to get into his mind, taking shape within it, an
image and a satisfactory conception of the universe." No, nor in five
or six years. Strictly speaking, he is not capable of conceptions at
all, but only of sense impressions; his sure guide is instinct--not
blundering reason. The dog starts with a fund of knowledge, which man
acquires slowly and painfully. But all this does not trouble one in
reading of Maeterlinck's dog. Our interest is awakened, and our
sympathies are moved, by seeing the world presented to the dog as it
presents itself to us, or by putting ourselves in the dog's place. It
is not false natural history, it is a fund of true human sentiment
awakened by the contemplation of the dog's life and character.
Maeterlinck does not ascribe human powers and capacities to his dumb
friend, the dog; he has no incredible tales of its sagacity and wit to
relate; it is only an ordinary bull pup that he describes, but he
makes us love it, and, through it, all other dogs, by his loving
analysis of its trials and tribulations, and its devotion to its god,
man. In like manner, in John Muir's story of his dog Stickeen,--a
story to go with "Rab and his Friends,"--our credulity is not once
challenged. Our sympathies are deeply moved because our reason is not
in the least outraged. It is true that Muir makes his dog act like a
human being under the press of great danger; but the action is not
the kind that involves reason; it only implies sense perception, and
the instinct of self-preservation. Stickeen does as his master bids
him, and he is human only in the human emotions of fear, despair, joy,
that he shows.
In Mr. Egerton Young's book, called "My Dogs of the Northland," I find
much that is interesting and several vivid dog portraits, but Mr.
Young humanizes his dogs to a greater extent than does either Muir or
Maeterlinck. For instance, he makes his dog Jack take special delight
in teasing the Indian servant girl by walking or lying upon her
kitchen floor when she had just cleaned it, all in revenge for the
slights the girl had put upon him; and he gives several instances of
the conduct of the dog which he thus interprets. Now one can believe
almost anything of dogs in the way of wit about their food, their
safety, and the like, but one cannot make them so entirely human as
deliberately to plan and execute the kind of revenge here imputed to
Jack. No animal could appreciate a woman's pride in a clean kitchen
floor, or see any relation between the tracks which he makes upon the
floor and her state of feeling toward himself. Mr. Young's facts are
doubtless all right; it is his interpretation of them that is wrong.
It is perfectly legitimate for the animal story writer to put himself
inside the animal he wishes to portray, and tell how life and the
world look from that point of view; but he must always be true to the
facts of the case, and to the limited intelligence for which he
speaks.
In the humanization of the animals, and of the facts of natural
history which is supposed to be the province of literature in this
field, we must recognize certain limits. Your facts are sufficiently
humanized the moment they become interesting, and they become
interesting the moment you relate them in any way to our lives, or
make them suggestive of what we know to be true in other fields and in
our own experience. Thoreau made his battle of the ants interesting
because he made it illustrate all the human traits of courage,
fortitude, heroism, self-sacrifice. Burns's mouse at once strikes a
sympathetic chord in us without ceasing to be a mouse; we see
ourselves in it. To attribute human motives and faculties to the
animals is to caricature them; but to put us in such relation with
them that we feel their kinship, that we see their lives embosomed in
the same iron necessity as our own, that we see in their minds a
humbler manifestation of the same psychic power and intelligence that
culminates and is conscious of itself in man,--that, I take it, is the
true humanization.
We like to see ourselves in the nature around us. We want in some way
to translate these facts and laws of outward nature into our own
experiences; to relate our observations of bird or beast to our own
lives. Unless they beget some human emotion in me,--the emotion of the
beautiful, the sublime,--or appeal to my sense of the fit, the
permanent,--unless what you learn in the fields and the woods
corresponds in some way with what I know of my fellows, I shall not
long be deeply interested in it. I do not want the animals humanized
in any other sense. They all have human traits and ways; let those be
brought out--their mirth, their joy, their curiosity, their cunning,
their thrift, their relations, their wars, their loves--and all the
springs of their actions laid bare as far as possible; but I do not
expect my natural history to back up the Ten Commandments, or to be an
illustration of the value of training-schools and kindergartens, or to
afford a commentary upon the vanity of human wishes. Humanize your
facts to the extent of making them interesting, if you have the art to
do it, but leave the dog a dog, and the straddle-bug a straddle-bug.