d hardly be worth while to walk very far
for any of these things, they are very pleasant when you are going
after the cows.

So I think it is no wonder that the little boys like to go after the
cows, and I wish that hundreds and thousands of pale-faced and
thin-legged little fellows had cows to go after.

THE REFLECTIVE STAG.

The more we study the habits and natures of animals the more firmly
are we convinced that, in many of them, what we call instinct is very
much like what we call reason.

In the case of a domestic animal, we may attribute, perhaps, a great
deal of its cleverness to its association with man and its capability
of receiving instruction. But wild animals have not the advantages of
human companionship, and what they know is due to the strength and
quality of their own understanding. And some of them appear to know a
great deal.

There are few animals which prove this assertion more frequently than
the stag. As his home is generally somewhere near the abodes of men,
and as his flesh is so highly prized by them, it is absolutely
necessary that he should take every possible precaution to preserve
his life from their guns and dogs. Accordingly, he has devised a great
many plans by which he endeavors--often successfully--to circumvent
his hunters. And to do this certainly requires reflection, and a good
deal of it, too. He even finds out that his scent assists the dogs in
following him. How he knows this I have not the slightest idea, but he
does know it.

Therefore it is that, when he is hunted, he avoids running through
thick bushes, where his scent would remain on the foliage; and, if
possible, he dashes into the water, and runs along the beds of shallow
streams, where the hounds often lose all trace of him. When this is
impossible, he bounds over the ground, making as wide gaps as he can
between his tracks. Sometimes, too, he runs into a herd of cattle, and
so confuses the dogs; and he has been known to jump up on the back of
an ox, and take a ride on the frightened creature, in order to get
his own feet partly off of the ground for a time, and thus to break
the line of his scent. When very hard pressed, a stag has suddenly
dropped on the ground, and when most of the dogs, unable to stop
themselves, dash over him, he springs to his feet, and darts off in an
opposite direction.

[Illustration]

He will also run back on his own track, and employ many other means of
the kind to deceive t