Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/259

 proceeds with serene and beautiful satisfaction to masticate it in the following fashion. He cites a large number of instances of purely instinctive actions on the parts of animals, and triumphantly demands if they are acts of reason. He tells of the robin that fought day after day its reflected image in a window- pane; of the birds in South America that were guilty of drilling clear through a mud wall, which they mistook for a solid clay bank; of the beaver that cut down a tree four times because it was held at the top by the branches of other trees; of the cow that licked the skin of her stuffed calf so affectionately that it came apart, whereupon she proceeded to eat the hay with which it was stuffed. He tells of the phoebe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it with moss in similar fashion to the way all phoebe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks. He tells of the high-hole that repeatedly drills through the clapboards of an empty house in a vain attempt to find a thickness of wood deep enough in which to build its nest. He tells of the migrating lemmings of Norway that plunge into the sea and drown in vast numbers because of their instinct to swim lakes and rivers in