after a couple of crows had come to expect something there daily, I
suspended a piece of meat by a string from a branch of the tree just
over the spot where I usually placed the food. A crow soon discovered
it, and came into the tree to see what it meant. His suspicions were
aroused. There was some design in that suspended meat, evidently. It was
a trap to catch him. He surveyed it from every near branch. He peeked
and pried, and was bent on penetrating the mystery. He flew to the
ground, and walked about and surveyed it from all sides. Then he took a
long walk down about the vineyard as if in hope of hitting upon some
clew. Then he came to the tree again, and tried first one eye, then the
other, upon it; then to the ground beneath; then he went away and came
back; then his fellow came, and they both squinted and investigated, and
then disappeared. Chickadees and woodpeckers would alight upon the meat
and peck it swinging in the wind, but the crows were fearful. Does this
show reflection? Perhaps it does, but I look upon it rather as that
instinct of fear and cunning so characteristic of the crow. Two days
passed thus: every morning the crows came and surveyed the suspended
meat from all points in the tree, and then went away. The third day I
placed a large bone on the snow beneath the suspended morsel. Presently
one of the crows appeared in the tree, and bent his eye upon the
tempting bone. "The mystery deepens," he seemed to say to himself. But
after half an hour's investigation, and after approaching several times
within a few feet of the food upon the ground, he seemed to conclude
there was no connection between it and the piece hanging by the string.
So he finally walked up to it and fell to pecking it, flickering his
wings all the time, as a sign of his watchfulness. He also turned up his
eye, momentarily, to the piece in the air above, as if it might be some
disguised sword of Damocles ready to fall upon him. Soon his mate came
and alighted on a low branch of the tree. The feeding crow regarded him
a moment, and then flew up to his side, as if to give him a turn at the
meat. But he refused to run the risk. He evidently looked upon the whole
thing as a delusion and a snare, and presently went away, and his mate
followed him. Then I placed the bone in one of the main forks of the
tree, but the crows kept at a safe distance from it. Then I put it back
to the ground, but they grew more and more suspicious; some evil in