stretches of country, and which keeps
them from ever being lost as man so often is, is a faculty entirely
unlike anything man now possesses. The same may be said of the faculty
that guides the birds back a thousand miles or more to their old
breeding-haunts. In caged or housed animals I fancy this faculty soon
becomes blunted. President Roosevelt tells in his "Ranch Life" of a
horse he owned that ran away two hundred miles across the plains,
swimming rivers on the way to its old home. It is very certain, I
think, that this homing feat is not accomplished by the aid of either
sight or scent, for usually the returning animal seems to follow a
comparatively straight line. It is, or seems to be, a consciousness of
direction that is as unerring as the magnetic needle. Reason,
calculation, and judgment err, but these primary instincts of the
animal seem almost infallible.

In Bronx Park in New York a grebe and a loon lived together in an
inclosure in which was a large pool of water. The two birds became
much attached to each other and were never long separated. One winter
day on which the pool was frozen over, except a small opening in one
end of it, the grebe dived under the ice and made its way to the far
end of the pool, where it remained swimming about aimlessly for some
moments. Presently the loon missed its companion, and with an apparent
look of concern dived under the ice and joined it at the closed end of
the pool. The grebe seemed to be in distress for want of air. Then the
loon settled upon the bottom, and with lifted beak sprang up with much
force against the ice, piercing it with its dagger-like bill, but not
breaking it. Down to the bottom it went again, and again hurled itself
up against the ice, this time shattering it and rising to the surface,
where the grebe was quick to follow. Now it looked as if the loon had
gone under the ice to rescue its friend from a dangerous situation,
for had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have perished, and
persons who witnessed the incident interpreted it in this way. It is
in such cases that we are so apt to read our human motives and
emotions into the acts of the lower animals. I do not suppose the loon
realized the danger of its companion, nor went under the ice to rescue
it. It followed the grebe because it wanted to be with it, or to share
in any food that might be detaining it there, and then, finding no
air-hole, it proceeded to make one, as it and its ancestor