the rainbow tints as well as the myriad drops of the summer shower, and the bow hovers in the spray of a small waterfall as surely as in that of Niagara. The thunderbolt leaps with no more speed across the black chasm of the clouded heavens than does the electric spark in your laboratory leap across the tiny space from one pole to the other.

But the big-lettered and startling headlines in Nature's book occupy the real nature lover less than does the smaller print. The big and exceptional things all can see, but only the loving observers take note of the minor facts and incidents.

Emerson in his journal thinks it worth while to notice the jokes of Nature. He cites the Punch faces in the English violets, the parrots, the monkeys, the lapwing's limping, and the like petty stratagems of other birds. He might have cited the little green tody of Jamaica, which is pretty sure to make one smile, or the murres of the Northern seas with their Jew-like profiles and short legs. But of course Nature does not joke; it is man that jokes and experiences a sense of humor in certain of her forms, but all these forms have serious purposes. Inanimate things often behave in a way to excite one's risibles, but that end can be no part of the plan of Nature. When inanimate things act like human beings we laugh, and when human beings act like inanimate things we laugh; why we laugh it would not be easy to say.

Most animals certainly have a keen sense of play, but it is very doubtful if even so humanized an animal as the dog has any sense of humor. The grotesque is pretty sure to frighten him instead of amusing him. The sense of humor implies powers of ideation, which the lower animals do not possess. The waltzing and saluting and other courtship antics of certain birds are very amusing to the human spectator, but it is all very serious business with the birds. I always have to smile when I see a chipmunk come up out of his hole into which he has been hurrying his winter food supply, stand up straight on his hind legs, and quickly wash his face. How rapidly he passes his paws

over that delicate nose and face, looking around the while to see if any danger is near! He does this at every trip. When we say on witnessing any act of an animal, "How cunning!' we feel, I suppose, a sense of its humanness; it suggests our own behavior under like conditions.

Last spring the vanishing of the deep snows from my lawn gave me a glimpse of the life and works of the meadow-mice in their winter freedom under the snow. At one place standing out very clearly was a long mouse highway, sunken into the turf and leading to a large dome-shaped nest of dry grass, which it entered by a round hole on one side and became two highways leading off over the turf. It suggested a tiny railroad station with its converging lines. "How cunning!" exclaimed some school children and their teacher to whom I pointed it out. The mice had evidently enjoyed privacy, freedom, and safety there under the two feet of snow, as the record they left clearly showed.

I smiled one day last April when, walking near the edge of a small pond, I saw a musk-rat on shore very busy stuffing his mouth with dry leaves, then take to the water, holding his bedding well up till he came opposite to his hole in the bank, when he dived and swam to its under-water entrance. My smile was provoked, I suppose, by the discrepancy between the care the animal took to secure dry leaves, and the necessity that compelled it to plunge under the wave in order to reach its chamber. I do not suppose the musk-rat could have interpreted my smile had he seen it and tried.

I was interested and amused by the behavior of the big garter snake I met in my field walk one October day. The day was chilly and I could not stir the snake into any considerable degree of activity. He was sluggish and made no effort to escape, though I teased him with my cane for a quarter of an hour. He presently woke up enough to scent danger in my cane. Probably he had a dim sense that it was another snake. He flattened himself out and became a half round, opened his mouth

threateningly, but would not seize or strike my stick. He coiled beautifully, and when I turned him on his back he righted his body. After a while I noticed that his body began to contract at a point about one third the distance from the end of the tail; then, as I continued my teasing, he folded the lower part of his body back upon himself and twined it around the upper, like a vine doubling upon itself. If he was taking precautions against my stick as another snake trying to swallow him, it was good tactics; it would have made the problem of swallowing him much more difficult. I do not think it at all probable that the snake had ever experienced such uncivil treatment before, and the emergency was met by the best resources the poor half benumbed creature had. "Swallow me, if you will, but I will stick in your throat if I can." I left him unharmed, doubled and twisted in self-defense.

Jokes in nature, no! but there are curious and amusing forms and incidents-grotesque shapes, preposterous color schemes and appendages, from our point of view, but all a serious part of the complex web of animal life.

The transparent trick of the ground-building birds to decoy you from their nests or young is very amusing, but the heart of the poor mother-bird is in her mouth.

The cock or mock nests of the house wren and marsh wren look like jokes; in fact the wrens themselves seem like jokes, they are so pert and fussy and attitudinizing, but whether these extra nests are sham nests or whether they are the result of the overflowing measure of the breeding instinct, or decoy nests, serving a real purpose in concealing or protecting the real nest, is a question.

There are more tragedies in wild life than comedies, and fear is a much more active agent in development than joy or peace. The only two of our more common wild animals that I recall, in which the instinct or impulse of fear is low, are the porcupine and the skunk. Both are pretty effectively armed against their natural enemies and both are very slow, stupid animals.

When I stop to contemplate the ways of the wild creatures around me and the part they play in the all-the-year-round drama, my thoughts are pretty sure to rest for a while on the crow. From the wide distribution of the crow over the earth in some form, it would appear that Nature has him very much at heart. She has equipped him to make his way in widely diversified lands and climates. He thrives upon the shore and he thrives upon the mountains. He is not strictly a bird of prey, neither is he preyed upon. What is it in nature that he expresses? True, he expresses cunning, hardiness, sociability; but he is not alone in these things. Yet the crow is unique; he is a character, and at times one is almost persuaded that he has a vein of humor in him. Probably no country boy who has had a tame crow has any doubt about it. His mischief-making propensities are certainly evident enough. His soliloquies, his deliberate cat-calls and guttural sounds, his petty stealings, his teasing of other animals, his impudent curiosity, all stamp him as a bird full of the original Adam.

His

Country people are now much more friendly to the crow than they were in my boyhood. He is not so black as he was painted. The farmers have learned that he is their friend, for all his occasional corn-pulling and chicken-stealing. is the one voice you are pretty sure to hear wherever your walk leads you. He is at home and about his own business. It is not his grace as a flyer that pleases us; he is heavy and commonplace on the wing- no airiness, no easy mastery as with the hawks; only when he walks is he graceful. The pedestrian crow! how much at home he looks upon the ground ebony clod-hopper, but in his bearing the lord of the soil. He always looks prosperous; he always looks contented; his voice is always reassuring. The farmer may be disgruntled and discouraged, his crows are not. The country is good enough for them; they can meet their engagements; they do not borrow trouble; they have not lived on the credit of the future; their acres are not mortgaged. The crow is a type of the cheerful,

an

successful countryman. He is not a bird of leisure; he is always busy, going somewhere, or policing the woods, or saluting his friends, or calling together the clans, or mobbing a hawk, or spying out new feeding-grounds, or taking stock of the old, or just cawing to keep in touch with his fellows. He is very sociable; he has many engagements, now to the woods, now to the fields, now to this valley, now to the next a round of pleasure or duty all the day long. Not given to solitude and contemplation like the proud hawks, not pugnacious, never or rarely quarreling with his fellows, cheerfully sharing his last morsel with them, playing sentinel while they feed, suspicious, inquisitive, cunning, but never hiding; as open as the day in his manners, proclaiming his whereabouts at all hours of the day, looking upon you as the intruder and himself as the rightful occupant. The stiller the day the more noise he makes. He is never a sneaker, never has the air of a prowler. He is always in the public eye or ear. His color gives him away, his voice gives him away; on the earth or in the sky he is seen and heard afar. No creature wants his flesh, no lady wants his plume, though a more perfect and brilliant ebony cannot be found in nature. He is a bit of the night with the sheen of the stars in it, yet the open day is his province, publicity his passion. A spy, a policeman, a thief, a good fellow, a loyal friend, an alarmist, a socialist, all in one. Winter makes him gregarious, as it does many men; at night he seeks the populous rookery in the woods, by day he wanders in bands seeking food. In spring he establishes a crow network all over the country and is rarely out of ear-shot of some of his fellows. How we should miss him from the day! Among our community of birds he is the conspicuous, all-the-year-round feature. We do not love him, there is no poetry in his soul; but he challenges our attention, he is at home in the landscape, he is never disgruntled. Come rain, come shine, come heat, come snow, he is on his job and is always reassuring.