TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation,and ligature usage have been retained.
WAYS OF NATURE
A BIRD IN SIGHTWAYS OF NATURE
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1905 BY JOHN BURROUGHS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October 1905
PREFACE
My reader will find this volume quite a departurein certain ways from the tone and spirit of my previousbooks, especially in regard to the subject ofanimal intelligence. Heretofore I have made themost of every gleam of intelligence of bird or four-footedbeast that came under my observation, often,I fancy, making too much of it, and giving the wildcreatures credit for more "sense" than they reallypossessed. The nature lover is always tempted todo this very thing; his tendency is to humanize thewild life about him, and to read his own traits andmoods into whatever he looks upon. I have neverconsciously done this myself, at least to the extentof willfully misleading my reader. But some of ourlater nature writers have been guilty of this fault,and have so grossly exaggerated and misrepresentedthe every-day wild life of our fields and woods thattheir example has caused a strong reaction to takeplace in my own mind, and has led me to set aboutexamining the whole subject of animal life andinstinct in a way I have never done before.
In March, 1903, I contributed to "The AtlanticMonthly" a paper called "Real and Sham NaturalHistory," which was as vigorous a protest as I could[Pg vi]make against the growing tendency to humanizethe lower animals. The paper was widely read anddiscussed, and bore fruit in many ways, much ofit good and wholesome fruit, but a little of it bitterand acrid. For obvious reasons that paper is notincluded in this collection. But I have given all theessays that were the outcome of the currents ofthought and inquiry that it set going in my mind,and I have given them nearly in the order in whichthey were written, so that the reader may see thegrowth of my own mind and opinions in relation tothe subject. I confess I have not been fully able topersuade myself that the lower animals ever showanything more than a faint gleam of what we callthought and reflection,—the power to evolve ideasfrom sense impressions,—except feebly in the caseof the dog and the apes, and possibly the elephant.Nearly all the animal behavior that the credulouspublic looks upon as the outcome of reason is simplythe result of the adaptiveness and plasticity ofinstinct. The animal has impulses and impressionswhere we have ideas and concepts. Of our facultiesI concede to them perception, sense memory, andassociation of memories, and little else. Withoutthese it would be impossible for their lives to go on.
I am aware that there is much repetition in thisvolume, and that the names of several of the separatechapters differ much more than do the subjectsdiscussed in them.
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