ower, is a matter of common
observation. I hesitate, therefore, to say that Mr. Kearton's plover
showed anything more than very keen instincts. Among our own birds
there is only one, so far as I know that detects the egg of the
cowbird when it is laid in the bird's nest, and that is the yellow
warbler. All the other birds accept it as their own, but this warbler
detects the imposition, and proceeds to get rid of the strange egg by
burying it under a new nest bottom.

Man is undoubtedly of animal origin. The road by which he has come out
of the dim past lies through the lower animals. The germ and
potentiality of all that he has become or can become was sleeping
there in his humble origins. Of this I have no doubt. Yet I think we
are justified in saying that the difference between animal
intelligence and human reason is one of kind and not merely of degree.
Flying and walking are both modes of locomotion, and yet may we not
fairly say they differ in kind? Reason and instinct are both
manifestations of intelligence, yet do they not belong to different
planes? Intensify animal instinct ever so much, and you have not
reached the plane of reason. The homing instinct of certain animals is
far beyond any gift of the kind possessed by man, and yet it seems in
no way akin to reason. Reason heeds the points of the compass and
takes note of the topography of the country, but what can animals know
of these things?

And yet I say the animal is father of the man. Without the lower
orders, there could have been no higher. In my opinion, no miracle or
special creation is required to account for man. The transformation
of force, as of heat into light or electricity, is as great a leap and
as mysterious as the transformation of animal intelligence into human
reason.

XIII

READING THE BOOK OF NATURE

In studying Nature, the important thing is not so much what we see as
how we interpret what we see. Do we get at the true meaning of the
facts? Do we draw the right inference? The fossils in the rocks were
long observed before men drew the right inference from them. So with a
hundred other things in nature and life.

During May and a part of June of 1903, a drouth of unusual severity
prevailed throughout the land. The pools and marshes nearly all dried
up. Late in June the rains came again and filled them up. Then an
unusual thing happened: suddenly, for two or three days