Wood folk at school

It may surprise many, whose knowledge of wild animals is gained from rare, fleeting glimpses of frightened hoof or wing in the woods, to consider that there can be such a thing as a school for the Wood Folk; or that instruction has any place in the life of the wild things. Nevertheless it is probably true that education among the higher order of animals has its distinct place and value. Their knowledge, however simple, is still the result of three factors: instinct, training, and experience. Instinct only begins the work; the mother’s training develops and supplements the instinct; and contact with the world, with its sudden dangers and unknown forces, finishes the process. For many years the writer has been watching animals and recording his observations with the idea of determining, if possible, which of these three is the governing factor in the animal’s life. Some of the results of this study were published last year in a book called “School of the Woods,” which consisted of certain studies of animals from life, and certain theories in the form of essays to account for what the writer’s eyes had seen and his own ears heard in the great wilderness among the animals. A school reader is no place for theories; therefore that part of the book is not given here. The animal studies alone are reproduced in answer to the requests from many teachers that these be added to the Wood Folk books. From these the reader can form his own conclusions as to the relative importance of instinct and training, if he will. But there is another and a better way open: watch the purple martins for a few days when the young birds first leave the house; find a crow’s nest, and watch secretly while the old birds are teaching their little ones to fly; follow a fox, or any other wild mother-animal, patiently as she leaves the den and leads the cubs out into the world of unknown sights and sounds and smells,—and you will learn more in a week of what education means to the animals than anybody’s theories can ever teach you. These are largely studies of individual animals and birds. They do not attempt to give the habits of a class or species, for the animals of the same class are alike only in a general way; they differ in interest and