yet behold the
forest or the flowery plain. Her springs leap out everywhere, yet how
inevitably their waters find their way into streams, the streams into
rivers, and the rivers to the sea. Nature is an engineer without
science, and a builder without rules.

The animals follow the tides and the seasons; they find their own; the
fittest and the luckiest survive; the struggle for life is sharp with
them all; birds of a feather flock together; the young cowbirds reared
by many different foster-parents all gather in flocks in the fall;
they know their kind--at least, they are attracted by their kind.

A correspondent asks me if I do not think the minds of animals capable
of improvement. Not in the strict sense. When we teach an animal
anything, we make an impression upon its senses and repeat this
impression over and over, till we establish a habit. We do not bring
about any mental development as we do in the child; we mould and stamp
its sense memory. It is like bending or compressing a vegetable growth
till it takes a certain form.

The human animal sees through the trick, he comprehends it and does
not need the endless repetition. When repetition has worn a path in
our minds, then we, too, act automatically, or without conscious
thought, as we do, for instance, in forming the letters when we write.

Wild animals are trained, but not educated. We multiply impressions
upon them without adding to their store of knowledge, because they
cannot evolve general ideas from these sense impressions. Here we
reach their limitations. A bluebird or a robin will fight its
reflected image in the window-pane of a darkened room day after day,
and never master the delusion. It can take no step beyond the evidence
of its senses--a hard step even for man to take. You may train your
dog so that he will bound around you when he greets you without
putting his feet upon you. But do you suppose the fond creature ever
comes to know why you do not want his feet upon you? If he does, then
he takes the step in general knowledge to which I have referred. Your
cow, tethered by a long rope upon the lawn, learns many things about
that rope and how to manage it that she did not know when she was
first tied, but she can never know why she is tethered, or why she is
not to crop the shrubbery, or paw up the turf, or reach the corn on
the edge of the garden. This would imply general ideas or power of
reflection. You might punish her until she was afraid t