He has seen a mother song sparrow
helping her two-year-old daughter build her nest. He has discovered
that the cat talks to her kittens with her ears: when she points them
forward, that means "yes;" when she points them backward, that means
"no." Hence she can tell them whether the wagon they hear approaching
is the butcher's cart or not, and thus save them the trouble of
looking out.

And so on through a long list of wild and domestic creatures. At first
I suspected this writer was covertly ridiculing a certain other
extravagant "observer," but a careful reading of his letter shows him
to be seriously engaged in the worthy task of exposing "false natural
history."

Now the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks, the drumming of
grouse, are secondary sexual characteristics. They are not necessary
to the lives of the creatures, and are probably more influenced by
imitation than are the more important instincts of self-preservation
and reproduction. Yet the testimony is overwhelming that birds will
sing and roosters crow and turkeys gobble, though they have never
heard these sounds; and, no doubt, the grouse and the woodpeckers drum
from promptings of the same sexual instinct.

I do not wish to accuse "Hermit" of willfully perverting the facts of
natural history. He is one of those persons who read their own fancies
into whatever they look upon. He is incapable of disinterested
observation, which means he is incapable of observation at all in the
true sense. There are no animals that signal to each other with their
ears. The movements of the ears follow the movements of the eye. When
an animal's attention is directed to any object or sound, its ears
point forward; when its attention is relaxed, the ears fall. But with
the cat tribe the ears are habitually erect, as those of the horse are
usually relaxed. They depress them and revert them, as do many other
animals, when angered or afraid.

Certain things in animal life lead me to suspect that animals have
some means of communication with one another, especially the
gregarious animals, that is quite independent of what we mean by
language. It is like an interchange or blending of subconscious
states, and may be analogous to telepathy among human beings. Observe
what a unit a flock of birds becomes when performing their evolutions
in the air. They are not many, but one, turning and flashing in the
sun with a unity and a precision that it would be hard to imitate. One