February 4—This morning a friend told me he called "a tell story" culled from an h magazine: a man left a crown cork irom a soda water bottle outside his door; now la Thrush comes daily, picks up the metal "cork" and beats a tattoo with it until fed. I do not consider this story in any way "tall": look upon it merely as another example of the way in which birds (or any animal) will quickly learn to associate any kind of. sound with food or other natural requirements, Anyone who has been to Wells in Somerset to see the grand old cathedral will have visited the abbey moat (outside the chain-gate) and noted ihat the swans pull bells fixed up on the bank when they want food sent out: this has gone on for hundreds of years and one generation of swans teaches it to another. On the other side of the picture I have recorded how the birds which visit my garden have learnt to follow the slightest sound made by a fork on a plate....hey know that sound means food, and they come screaming from long distances when their keen ears detect it. Here is another curious example of animals liking sound: 1 watched a deer the other day in the Jessfield Zoo; it had picked up a stick in its teeth and was beating a tattoo with it on a rock after the manner of a tap-drummer; every now and then it stopped, as if admiring the effect, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.