d is by no means as sure as
that of the wild creatures. It is said that sheep will occasionally
eat laurel and St. John's-wort, which are poisonous to them. In the
far West I was told that the horses sometimes eat a weed called the
loco-weed that makes them crazy. I have since learned that the
buffaloes and cattle with a strain of the buffalo blood never eat this
weed.

The imitation among the lower animals to which I have referred is in
no sense akin to teaching. The boy does not learn arithmetic by
imitation. To teach is to bring one mind to act upon another mind; it
is the result of a conscious effort on the part of both teacher and
pupil. The child, says Darwin, has an instinctive tendency to speak,
but not to brew, or bake, or write. The child comes to speak by
imitation, as does the parrot, and then learns the meaning of words,
as the parrot does not.

I am convinced there is nothing in the notion that animals consciously
teach their young. Is it probable that a mere animal reflects upon the
future any more than it does upon the past? Is it solicitous about the
future well-being of its offspring any more than it is curious about
its ancestry? Persons who think they see the lower animals training
their young consciously or unconsciously supply something to their
observations; they read their own thoughts or preconceptions into what
they see. Yet so trained a naturalist and experienced a hunter as
President Roosevelt differs with me in this matter. In a letter which
I am permitted to quote, he says:--

"I have not the slightest doubt that there is a large amount of
_unconscious_ teaching by wood-folk of their offspring. In
unfrequented places I have had the deer watch me with almost as much
indifference as they do now in the Yellowstone Park. In frequented
places, where they are hunted, young deer and young mountain sheep, on
the other hand,--and of course young wolves, bobcats, and the
like,--are exceedingly wary and shy when the sight or smell of man is
concerned. Undoubtedly this is due to the fact that from their
earliest moments of going about they learn to imitate the unflagging
watchfulness of their parents, and by the exercise of some associative
or imitative quality they grow to imitate and then to share the alarm
displayed by the older ones at the smell or presence of man. A young
deer that has never seen a man feels no instinctive alarm at his
presence, or at least very little; but it will undoubtedly