" The Wit of the Wild."

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 18, 20 July 1907, Page 10

" The Wit of the Wild."

Mr. Ernest Ingersoll collects in his little book, "The Wit of the Wild," a series of papers d^cscribing, mainly from his own observation, the habits of beasts and birds in the neighbourhood of his American home, which, we gather from internal evidence, ia not far from the Connecticut river. His stories are simple and pleasing, and have the peculiar value which belongs in natural history to things seen. Some of these stories are old and corns ate new, but Mr Ingersoll has the faculty of giving them point and meaning, and all the time he is feeling about for some clue to bird and beast philosophy Take, for instance, the chapter on "Birds and Beasts that Bluff, which, though naively written, is a quite interesting essay on tho tactics of the animal world. Bluifing in this connexion is to be defined as "an attempt to make your antagonist believe you bigger and stronger than you are or perhaps than he is, and thus it becomes the natural tactics of tho weak against the strong. All animals must either bluff or fight, and most do both, according to the nature of their antagonists. The unarmed, however, are the greatest bluffers of all. If shrinking out of sight fails them, thoir instinct is immediately to make themselves as big aa they can to produco fright. Mr. Ingorsoll, however, though for the sake of making a popular book he imputes all manner of human emotions to ljis birds and beasts, is clearly a profound sceptic in regard to their reasoning faculties. Wo are not to suppose that the snake has any idea of what he ia doing in imitating the behaviour of the more formidable members of his species, for he is much less aware of their existence than we are. How he came by his habit is, not to put too fine a point on it, a mystery. Tho evolutionist answers either that he is the degenerate descendant of a poisonous ancestor who has lost the poison but retains the aggressive habit which the poison encouraged, or that the habit has been found useful in the struggle for ence and that those who possess it have alone survived. Again, we are not even to suppose that the squirrel has tho slightest idea of what it is doing when it hoards up its nuts against tho winter. Squirrels who have ne\er known a wintor do it as eagerly as those who have, and they go on doing it as indefatigably as ever when transferred to a climate where there is no winter and no scarce time to provide against. Precisely co tho woodpecker of Southern California goes on hammering hundreds of acorns into holes in the bark of sugar pines to provide against a winter which never arrives, but which probably did arrive somo hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, and when the climate of California was different from what it now is. Th*o animal world abounds in instances of this pathetic waste labour, which can never be stopped because no one can tell tho unfortunate bird or beast that the need for it is past. Nevertheless it remains to explain how they first acquired the once moritorious habit, and though Mr. Ingersoll gives us a vory ingenious evolutionary account of how it arose merely from the habit of accumulating things, he yet fails to explain, why some animals do it and others do not. A recent writer has carried the suggestions so far us to contend that animals have not only no fear of death, but, according to the human conception, no fear of anyching, nor even, in the human sense, any sensitiveness to what we call pain— ■which; -if true; would abolish a whole world cf misplaced sentiment about animal suffering. That we contider to be a dangerous juggling with words. Mr. Ingersoll states it more moderately when he rejects for animals the whole of the positive ideiv, about life and death which explain vricide in th& human being. Wo may do that without eupposing that the appearances of fear and pain which they uiamf«3t are morely automatic actions without corresponding emotions. What au animnl really fears and feels is a very complicated question. Manifestly it lives in a world of apprehension and danger which would be intolerable to i 1 if its emotions were on the human scale. "Hunting animals," says Mr. Ingereoli, "have learned that in order to feed ur-'.n its prey they must reduce it to complete disability ; it is the submission — not tho death — of the creature which they ceek when they strike." The retriever, he adds, quaintly, "doss not sack the death of the duck ger se, but morely its instantensous acquiescence in his plan." Well, really it makes very I little differenco in what language we describo it. Tho "instantaneous acquiescence" in the retriever's plan is death to the duck, and it is all one to tho dc-c pursued by tho lion whether he submits or dies. Let us say, if we like, that the retriever seeks the acquiescence of the duck and the lion tho submission of the deer, but duck and deer alike are apparently well aware that retrievers and lions aro to be feared, and they suffer apparently all that we should call terror when threatened by these enemies. A mirtiful forgoifulnoss appears to supervene between one moment of peril and another, but there is no logic of tho animal process which does not compel iis to believe that the animal at ths moment of nttack fears for his •existence, which means that he fears death. One of the most interesting phases of animal existence is that winch concerns the strango partnerships which birds and beasts set up: — "The most extraordinary of these mutually protective arrangements is that between Cook's petrel and the tuatara lizard of New Zealand. This petrel, or 'titi, 1 breads on rock islets on the New Zealand coast and deposits a single egg at the interior ond of a tortuous burrow several feet long, dug by the birds themselves. 'On some of the islands,' says Buller, 'there oxists a very remarkable lizard — the tuatara of the Maoris. Wherever mo tuatara and burrowing petrel coexist there appoars to ba a perfect understanding between them, an« thsy share tho same habitation. When, as often happens, the terminal chamber of the burrow has two chambors, one is occupied by the bird and tho other by tho reptile- usually cheek by jowl. 1 The curious pnrt of the stoiy follows. Ordinarily the lizard is timid and does its best to escape ; but herf, whenever anyone attempts to meddle with the bird on its nest, tho lizard immediately conies to the ■ rescue, attacking the hands with exceeding ferocity and biting fiercely. So real and constant is this defence that collectors of the petrol's eggs are obliged to dispose of their faithful guardian before thoy can get at the nest. What reward the tuatara exacts or receives for this friendly service, beyond the shelter it enjoys is not Known. '■ If Herodotus had told this story it would scarcely have added to his reputation for veracity. He got into sad trouble over the perfectly true story of the bird and tho crocodile. The birds who build their nests in the neighbourhood of wasps .can scarcely be said to bo engaging in a partnership. They tako the risk of being stung by the wasps in the belief that the wasps can bo relied upon to sting those who disturb the neighbourhood. Like prudent people, they protect themselves as far as possible from tho fiorceness of their adopted police by building domes to the roofs of thoir nests. It is an ingonious arrangement, but the wasps appear to be unaware of the part assigned to them by Iho birds, and make no scruple about k'Uliug iUo bivcls when annoyed by them — .Wp*lmir<Ki*r Gsurfitt*