hem. It has all been play. I have gone a-fishing or camping
or canoeing, and new literary material has been the result....
The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment of
my holiday in the fields or woods; not till the writing did it
really seem to strike in and become part of me"; and so the
reader seems to participate in this "finer enjoyment" of a
holiday in the fields or woods, walking arm-in-arm with the
naturalist, feeling the influence of his poetic temperament,
learning something new at every turn, and sharing the master's
enthusiasm.

I

THE WIT OF A DUCK

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most
remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill
in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems
at times as if they possessed some extra sense--the home
sense--which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated one
spring in the case of a mallard drake.

My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drake
of a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought the
drake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road
along which it was carried, or to get the general direction,
except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a few
rods openly.

He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in a
secluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from the
highway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was
easy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, and
he soon left the presence of the scornful ducks.

Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them there
a day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducks
and the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left to
himself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and started
up the hill for the highway.

Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, but
with the same results as before. There seemed to be but one
thought in the mind of the drake, and that was home.

Several times we headed him off and brought him back, till
finally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If that
drake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity to
make the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair
play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up through
the currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highway
which he had never seen