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XIII READING THE BOOK OF
NATURE IN studying Nature, the important thing is not so much what we see as how we interpret what we see. Do we get at the true meaning of the facts? Do we draw the right inference? The fossils in the rocks were long observed before men drew the right inference from them. So with a hundred other things in nature and life. During May and a
part of June of 1903, a drouth of unusual severity prevailed throughout the
land. The pools and marshes nearly all dried up. Late in June the rains came
again and filled them up. Then an unusual thing happened: suddenly, for two or
three days and nights, the marshes about me were again vocal with the many
voices of the hyla, the “peepers” of early spring. That is the fact. Now, what
is the interpretation? With me the peepers become silent in early May, and, I
suppose, leave the marshes for their life in the woods. Did the drouth destroy
all their eggs and young, and did they know this and so come back to try again?
How else shall one explain their second appearance in the marshes? But how did
they know of the destruction of their young, and how can we account for their
concerted action? These are difficulties not easily overcome. A more rational
explanation to me is this, namely, that the extreme dryness of the woods —
nearly two months without rain — drove the little frogs to seek for moisture in
their spring haunts, where in places a little water would be pretty certain to
be found. Here they were holding out, probably hibernating again, as such
creatures do in the tropics during the dry season, when the rains came, and
here again they sent up their spring chorus of voices, and, for aught I know,
once more deposited their eggs. This to me is much more like the ways of Nature
with her creatures than is the theory of the frogs’ voluntary return to the
swamps and pools to start the season over again. The birds at least
show little or no wit when a new problem is presented to them. They have no
power of initiative. Instinct runs in a groove, and cannot take a step outside
of it. One May day we started a meadowlark from her nest. There were three just
hatched young in the nest, and one egg lying on the ground about two inches
from the nest. I suspected that this egg was infertile and that the bird had
had the sense to throw it out, but on examination it was found to contain a
nearly grown bird. The inference was, then, that the egg had been accidentally
carried out of the nest some time when the sitting bird had taken a sudden flight,
and that she did not have the sense to roll or carry it back to its place. There is another
view of the case which no doubt the sentimental “School of Nature Study” would
eagerly adopt: A very severe drouth reigned throughout the land; food was probably
scarce, and was becoming scarcer; the bird foresaw her inability to care for
four young ones, and so reduced the possible number by ejecting one of the eggs
from the nest. This sounds pretty and plausible, and so credits the bird with
the wisdom that the public is so fond of believing it possesses. Something like
this wisdom often occurs among the hive bees in seasons of scarcity; they will
destroy the unhatched queens. But birds have no such foresight, and make no
such calculations. In cold, backward seasons, I think, birds lay fewer eggs
than when the season is early and warm, but that is not a matter of calculation
on their part; it is the result of outward conditions. A great many
observers and nature students at the present time are possessed of the notion
that the birds and beasts instruct their young, train them and tutor them, much
after the human manner. In the familiar sight of a pair of crows foraging
with their young about a field in summer, one of our nature writers sees the
old birds giving their young a lesson in flying. She says that the most
important thing that the elders had to do was to teach the youngsters how to
fly. This they did by circling about the pasture, giving a peculiar call while
they were followed by their flock — all but one. This was a bobtailed crow, and
he did not obey the word of command. His mother took note of his disobedience
and proceeded to discipline him. He stood upon a big stone, and she came down
upon him and knocked him off his perch. “He squawked and fluttered his wings to
keep from falling, but the blow came so suddenly that he had not time to save
himself, and he fell flat on the ground. In a minute he clambered back upon his
stone, and I watched him closely. The next time the call came to fly he did not
linger, but went with the rest, and so long as I could watch him he never
disobeyed again.” I should interpret this fact of the old and young crows
flying about a field in summer quite differently. The young are fully fledged,
and are already strong flyers, when this occurs. They do not leave the nest
until they can fly well and need no tutoring. What the writer really saw was
what any one may see on the farm in June and July: she saw the parent crows
foraging with their young in a field. The old birds flew about, followed by
their brood, clamorous for the food which their parents found. The bobtailed
bird, which had probably met with some accident, did not follow, and the mother
returned to feed it; the young crow lifted its wings and flapped them, and in
its eagerness probably fell off its perch; then when its parent flew away, it
followed. I think it highly
probable that the sense or faculty by which animals find their way home over
long stretches of country, and which keeps them from ever being lost as man so
often is, is a faculty entirely unlike anything man now possesses. The same may
be said of the faculty that guides the birds back a thousand miles or more to
their old breeding-haunts. In caged or housed animals I fancy this faculty soon
becomes blunted. President Roosevelt tells in his “Ranch Life” of a horse he
owned that ran away two hundred miles across the plains, swimming rivers on the
way to its old home. It is very certain, I think, that this homing feat is not
accomplished by the aid of either sight or scent, for usually the returning
animal seems to follow a comparatively straight line. It is, or seems to be, a
consciousness of direction that is as unerring as the magnetic needle. Reason,
calculation, and judgment err, but these primary instincts of the animal seem
almost infallible. In Bronx Park in
New York a grebe and a loon lived together in an inclosure in which was a large
pool of water. The two birds became much attached to each other and were never
long separated. One winter day on which the pool was frozen over, except a
small opening in one end of it, the grebe dived under the ice and made its way
to the far end of the pool, where it remained swimming about aimlessly for some
moments. Presently the loon missed its companion, and with an apparent look of
concern dived under the ice and joined it at the closed end of the pool. The
grebe seemed to be in distress for want of air. Then the loon settled upon the
bottom, and with lifted beak sprang up with much force against the ice,
piercing it with its dagger-like bill, but not breaking it. Down to the bottom
it went again, and again hurled itself up against the ice, this time shattering
it and rising to the surface, where the grebe was quick to follow, Now it
looked as if the loon had gone under the ice to rescue its friend from a
dangerous situation, for had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have
perished, and persons who witnessed the incident interpreted it in this way. It
is in such cases that we are so apt to read our human motives and emotions
into the acts of the lower animals. I do not suppose the loon realized the
danger of its companion, nor went under the ice to rescue it. It followed the
grebe because it wanted to be with it, or to share in any food that might be
detaining it there, and then, finding no air-hole, it proceeded to make one, as
it and its ancestors must often have done before. All our northern divers must
be more or less acquainted with ice, and must know how to break it. The grebe
itself could doubtless have broken the ice had it desired to. The birds and the
beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks like intelligence, but, as
Hamerton says, “the moment we think of them as human, we are lost.” A farmer had a
yearling that sucked the cows. To prevent this, he put on the yearling a muzzle
set full of sharpened nails. These of course pricked the cows, and they would
not stand to be drained of their milk. The next day the farmer saw the yearling
rubbing the nails against a rock in order, as he thought, to dull them so they
would not prick the cows! How much easier to believe that the beast was simply
trying to get rid of the awkward incumbrance upon its nose. What can a calf or
a cow know about sharpened nails, and the use of a rock to dull them? This is a
kind of outside knowledge — outside of their needs and experiences — that they
could not possess. An Arizona friend
of mine lately told me this interesting incident about the gophers that
infested his cabin when he was a miner. The gophers ate up his bread. He could
not hide it from them or put it beyond their reach. Finally, he bethought him
to stick his loaf on the end of a long iron poker that he had, and then stand
up the poker in the middle of his floor. Still, when he came back to his cabin,
he would find his loaf eaten full of holes. One day, having nothing to do, he
concluded to watch and see how the gophers reached the bread, and this was what
he saw: The animals climbed up the side of his log cabin, ran along one of the
logs to a point opposite the bread, and then sprang out sidewise toward the
loaf, which each one struck, but upon which only one seemed able to effect a
lodgment. Then this one would cling to the loaf and act as a stop to his
fellows when they tried a second time, his body affording them the barrier they
required. My friend felt sure that this leader deliberately and consciously
aided the others in securing a footing on the loaf. But I read the incident
differently. This successful jumper aided his fellows without designing it. The
exigencies of the situation compelled him to the course he pursued. Having effected
a lodgment upon the impaled loaf, he would of course cling to it when the
others jumped so as not to be dislodged, thereby, willy nilly, helping them to secure
a foothold. The cooperation was inevitable, and not the result of design. The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts; to see no more and no less than is actually before you; to be able to detach yourself and see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own sentiments or prepossessions. In short, to see with your reason as well as with your perceptions, that is to be an observer and to read the book of nature aright. |
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