kind; but whether this mastery is natural or acquired, who shall
tell?

What birds learn about migration, if anything, I do not see that we
have any means of finding out.

It has been observed of birds reared under artificial conditions that
the young males practice a long time before they sing well. That this
is true of wild birds, there is no proof. What birds and animals learn
by experience is greater cunning. Does not even an old trout know more
about hooks than a young one? Birds of any kind that are much hunted
become wilder, even though they have not had the experience of being
shot. Ask any duck or grouse or quail hunter if this is not so. Our
ruffed grouse learns to fly with a corkscrew motion where it is much
fired at on the wing. How wary and cautious the fox becomes in regions
where it is much trapped and hunted! Even the woodchuck becomes very
wild on the farms where it is much shot at, and this wildness extends
to its young. In his "Wilderness Hunter" President Roosevelt says the
same thing of the big game of the Rockies. Antelope and deer can be
lured near the concealed hunter by the waving of a small flag till
they are shot at a few times. Then they see through the trick. "The
burnt child fears the fire." Animals profit by experience in this way;
they learn what not to do. In the accumulation of positive knowledge,
so far as we know, they make little or no progress. Birds and beasts
will adapt themselves more or less to their environment, but plants
and trees will do that, too. The rats in Jamaica have learned to nest
in trees to escape the mongoose, but this is only the triumph of the
instinct of self-preservation. The mongoose has not yet learned to
climb trees; the pressure of need is not yet great enough. It is said
that in districts subject to floods moor-hens often build in trees.
All animals will change their habits under pressure of necessity; man
changes his without this pressure. The Duke of Argyll saw a bald eagle
seize a fish in the stream--an unusual proceeding; but the eagle was
doubtless very hungry, and there was no osprey near upon whom to levy
tribute.

Romanes found that rats would get certain semi-liquid foods out of a
bottle with their tails, as a cat will get milk out of a jar with her
paw, but neither ever progresses so far as to use any sort of tool for
the purpose, or to tip the vessel over. Animals practice concealment
to secure their prey, but not deception, as man does. The