ut special gifts.

Old Silverspot was the leader of a large band of crows that made
their headquarters near Toronto, Canada, in Castle Fra uk, which is a
pine-clad hill on the northeast edge of the city. This band numbered
about two hundred, and for reasons that I never understood did not
increase. In mild winters they stayed along the Niagara River; in cold
winters they went much farther south. But each year in the last week of
February, Old Silverspot would muster his followers and boldly cross the
forty miles of open water that lies between Toronto and Niagara; not,
however, in a straight line would he go, but always in a curve to
the west, whereby he kept in sight of the familiar landmark of Dundas
Mountain, until the pine-clad hill itself came in view. Each year he
came with his troop, and for about six weeks took up his abode on
the hill. Each morning thereafter the crows set out in three bands to
forage. One band went southeast to Ashbridge's Bay. One went north up
the Don, and one, the largest, went northwestward up the ravine. The
last, Silverspot led in person. Who led the others I never found out.

On calm mornings they flew high and straight away. But when it was
windy the band flew low, and followed the ravine for shelter. My windows
overlooked the ravine, and it was thus that in 1885 I first noticed this
old crow. I was a newcomer in the neighborhood, but an old resident
said to me then "that there old crow has been a-flying up and down this
ravine for more than twenty years." My chances to watch were in the
ravine, and Silverspot doggedly clinging to the old route, though now
it was edged with houses and spanned by bridges, became a very familiar
acquaintance. Twice each day in March and part of April, then again
in the late summer and the fall, he passed and repassed, and gave me
chances to see his movements, and hear his orders to his bands, and so,
little by little, opened my eyes to the fact that the crows, though a
little people, are of great wit, a race of birds with a language and a
social system that is wonderfully human in many of its chief points, and
in some is better carried out than our own.

One windy day I stood on the high bridge across the ravine, as the old
crow, heading his long, straggling troop, came flying down homeward.
Half a mile away I could hear the contented 'All's well, come right
along!' as we should say, or as he put it, and as also his lieutenant
echoed it at the rear of