ieving 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