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of actual observation he is telling the truth only when he tells the thing as it really is, reports the habits and behavior of the animals as they really are./What do we mean by powers of observation but the power to see the thing as it is - to see the truth? An opulent imagination cannot make up for feeble powers of observation. The effect the fact observed has upon you, what you make of it, what it signifies to you - that is another matter. Here interpretation comes in, and on this line you have the field all to yourself. I may think your interpretation absurd, but I shall not question your veracity or honesty of purpose. We are very likely to differ in taste, in opinions about this and that, in religion, politics, art, but we must agree upon facts. Unless there is some chance that men can see and report accurately, what becomes of the value of human testimony as given by eye-witnesses on the witness stand? Things do fall out so and so, or they fall out otherwise; it is not a matter of imagination or of temperament in the beholder, but a matter of accurate seeing. In getting at the value of a man's testimony we may have to take into account his excitable or his phlegmatic temperament and the seductive power of his imagination, and eliminate them as so much dross in a metal. Eye-witnesses generally differ; we must reconcile the differences and sift out the facts.

The animal-story writers, such as Mr. Roberts

and Mr. Seton, aim to give the charm of art and literature to their natural-history lore; so to work up their facts that they appeal to our emotion and imagination. This is legitimate and a high calling, provided they do not transgress the rule I have been laying down, which Mr. Roberts does when he represents the skunk as advertising his course through the woods to all other creatures by his characteristic odor, since the skunk emits that odor only when attacked, and is at all other times as odorless as a squirrel; or when he says the fox is too cunning to raid the poultry yard near its own door, but will go far off for its plunder. I wish the pair of foxes that had their den within easy rifleshot of our farmhouse the past season had acted upon this policy. We should have reared more chickens, and one of the foxes would not have met his death in a charge of shot as he did while he was chasing a hen through the currant patch in broad daylight.

The principal aim of the teacher of nature study in the schools should be to help the children to see straight, to develop and sharpen their powers of observation, and to give them rational views of animal mentality.

When one of our nature writers, whose methods have been much criticised, says in the introduction to one of his books on animal life that he would “make nature study more vital and attractive by

revealing a vast realm of nature outside the realm of science," is not one set to puzzling one's brain as to how there can be any legitimate nature study that will carry one beyond the realm of science? Is there any subject-matter in the books thus prefaced that science cannot deal with? And why does the author aver with such emphasis that his facts are all true and verifiable?—just the test that science demands. If it is all true and sound natural history, what puts it outside the realm of science? If it is not true and real, why call it nature study? Why not call it the gentle art of bearing false witness against the animals? But this realm of nature outside the realm of science the realm of the occult- is not open to observation, and is therefore not a subject for nature study. The realm of science embraces the whole visible, tangible, and intangible universe. Is not that field enough for nature study? Can there be any other field? What lies outside of this is mere matter of speculation.

The works of the writer referred to are outside the realm of science only as every exaggeration and falsification is outside that realm, or as Alice in Wonderland and Jack and his beanstalk are outside. Such a course may make nature study more attractive to certain credulous minds, but it can hardly make it more vital, or add to our knowledge of the world and its denizens by which we are surrounded.

II

To see accurately and completely is a power given to few; hence the observations of the majority of people are of no scientific value whatever. One spring I was interested in the question as to how the crow picks up a dead fish or other food from the surface of the water with its feet or its bill. One would naturally say with its bill, of course, as all except the rapacious birds hold and carry things in their beaks. But one of our younger nature writers made the crow carry food for its young in its claws, and a teacher of zoology in a Western academy wrote that he had seen a crow pick up a dead fish from a pond and carry it ashore with its feet. I wrote and cross-questioned the teacher a little; among other things, I asked him if he had the point in question in mind when he saw the crow pick up the fish. As I never received an answer, I concluded that this witness broke down on the crossexamination.

I put the question to fishermen on the river: Had they ever seen a crow pick up anything from the surface of the water? Oh, yes, lots of times. Did he seize the object with his feet or his beak? They would pause and think, and then some would reply, "Indeed, I can't say; I did not notice." One man said emphatically, “With his feet;" another was quite as sure it was done with the bill.

I myself was sure I had seen crows pick up food from the water, as gulls do, with the bill. I had the vision of that low stooping of the head while the bird was in the act. I asked my son, who spends much time on the river, and who is a keen observer. He had often seen the thing done, but was not certain whether it was with the beak or the feet. A few days later he was on the river, and saw a crow that had spied a fragment of a loaf of bread floating on the water. Having the point in mind, he watched the crow attentively. Down came old crow with extended legs, and my son said to himself, "Yes, he is going to seize it with his feet." But he did not; his legs went down into the water, for what purpose I cannot say, but he seized the bread with his beak, rose up with it and then dropped it, then seized it again in the same way and bore it toward a tree on the shore. Not many days later I saw a crow pick up something from the river in the same way: the feet went into the water, but the object was seized with the beak. The crow's feet are not talons, and are adapted only to perching and walking. So far as I know, all our birds, except birds of prey, carry their food and their nesting-material in their beaks.

One day I saw an eagle flying over with something like a rope dangling from its feet, probably a black snake. A bird carries its capture with the member by which it seizes it, which with birds of prey is the foot, and with other birds the beak. The

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