ad really forgotten the stores he had laid up. Scattered
magazines of this kind, established in times of accidental plenty, may
render life during our winters possible to the crow.

But why should he give himself so much trouble to subsist here, when a
few hours' work with those broad wings would bear him to a land of
tropical abundance? The crow, it seems, is not a mere eating and
drinking machine, drawn hither and thither by the balance of supply
and demand, but has his motives of another sort. Is it, perhaps, some
local attachment, so that a crow hatched in Brookline, for example,
would be more loath than another to quit that neighborhood,--a sort of
crow patriotism, akin to that which keeps the Greenlanders slowly
starving of cold and hunger on that awful coast of theirs.

It is not probable, however, that the crow allows himself to suffer
much from these causes; he is far too knowing for that, and shows his
position at the head of the bird kind by an almost total emancipation
from scruples and prejudices, and by the facility with which he adapts
himself to special cases. Instinct works by formulas, which, as it
were, make up the animal, so that the ant and the bee are atoms of
incarnate constructiveness and acquisitiveness, and nothing else. And
as intelligence, when its action is too narrowly concentrated, whether
upon pin-making or money-making, tends to degenerate into mere
instinct,--so instinct, when it begins to compare, and to except, and
to vary its action according to circumstances, shows itself in the act
of passing into intelligence. This marks the superiority of the crow
over birds it often resembles in its actions. Most birds are
wary. The crow is wary, and something more. Other shy birds, for
instance ducks, avoid every strange object. The crow considers whether
there be anything dangerous in the strangeness. An ordinary scarecrow
will not keep our crow from anything worth a little risk. He fathoms
the scarecrow, compares its behavior, under various circumstances,
with that of the usual wearer of its garments, and decides to take the
risk. To protect his corn, the farmer takes advantage of this very
discursiveness, and stretches round the field a simple line, nothing
in itself, but hinting at some undeveloped mischief which the bird
cannot penetrate.

Again, the crow is sometimes looked upon as a mere marauder; but this
description also is much too narrow for him. He is anxious only for
his dinner,