e that the writer deceived himself, than that
such a thing ever happened. In the first place, a grouse could not
pick up an egg with her wing when crows were trying to rob her, and,
in the second place, she would not think far enough to do it if she
had the power. What was she going to do with the egg? Bring it to the
hermit for his breakfast? This last supposition is just as reasonable
as any part of the story. A grouse will not readily leave her
unfledged young, but she will leave her eggs when disturbed by man or
beast with apparent unconcern.

It is the rarest thing in the world that real observers see any of
these startling and exceptional things in nature. Thoreau saw none.
White saw none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir reports none,
Audubon none. It is always your untrained observer that has his poser,
his shower of frogs or lizards, or his hoop snakes, and the like. The
impossible things that country people see or hear of would make a book
of wonders. In some places fishermen believe that the loon carries its
egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say that they are in
a position to know. So they are. But opportunity is only half the
problem; the verifying mind is the other half. One of our writers of
popular nature books relates this curious incident of "animal surgery"
among wild ducks. He discovered two eider ducks swimming about a
fresh-water pond and acting queerly, "dipping their heads under water
and keeping them there for a minute or more at a time." He later
discovered that the ducks had large mussels attached to their tongues,
and that they were trying to get rid of them by drowning them. The
birds had discovered that the salt-water mussel cannot live in fresh
water. Now am I to accept this story without question because I find
it printed in a book? In the first place, is it not most remarkable
that if the ducks had discovered that the bivalves could not live in
fresh water, they should not also have discovered that they could not
live in the air? In fact, that they would die as soon in the air as in
the fresh water?[5] See how much trouble the ducks could have saved
themselves by going and sitting quietly upon the beach, or putting
their heads under their wings and going to sleep on the wave. Oysters
are often laid down in fresh water to "fatten" before being sent to
market, and probably mussels would thrive for a short time in fresh
water equally well. In the second place, a duck's to