He darts ahead, and something frightens him, and so he doubles on his track. Then he hears something else, and with all his might he leaps to one side and makes away from his former track. Again something startles him, and the hare turns back and again jumps to one side. When it is daylight, he is in his hole.
In the morning, when the sportsmen begin to track the hare, they become confused in this maze of double tracks and long leaps, and they marvel at the hare’s shrewdness.
But the hare had no thought of being shrewd : he was merely afraid of everything.
Chapter IV
SCENT
A MAN sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose, tastes with his tongue, and feels with his fingers. Some men have more serviceable eyes. Some men have less serviceable eyes than others. One man has keen sense of hearing, another is deaf. One man has a more delicate sense of smell than another, and he perceives an odor from a long distance, while another will not notice the stench from a bad egg. One person recognizes an object by touching it, while another can do nothing of the sort, and is unable to distinguish wood from paper by the touch. One no sooner puts a substance into his mouth than he tells it is sweet, while another swallows it and cannot make out whether it is sweet or bitter.
In the same way wild animals have various senses in various degrees of power. But all wild animals have a keener scent than man has. When a man wants to tell what an object is, he examines it, he listens when it makes a noise, sometimes he smells of it and tastes it; but more than all, if a man wants to be sure what an object is, he must feel of it.
But in the case of almost all wild animals, their chief dependence is on smelling the object. The horse, the wolf, the dog, the cow, the bear, do not recognize sub-stances until they test them by smelling.
When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts; in other words, it clears its nose so as to smell better, and its fear does not disappear until it has scented the object. A dog will often follow its master by its scent, and when it sees its master it is afraid, it does not recognize him, and it keeps on barking until it smells him, and recognizes that what seemed terrible to his eyes is really his master. Cattle see other cattle killed, they hear other cattle bellow in the abattoir, and yet they have no comprehension of what is taking place. But if the cow or the ox happens to find a place where the blood of cattle has been shed and catches the scent of it, then the creature understands, begins to low, kicks, and resists being driven from the place.
An old man had a sick wife; he himself went to milk the cow. The cow lowed; she knew it was not her mistress, and she would not give any milk. The man’s wife 1 told him to wear her cloak and put her kerchief on his head; and when he did so the cow let herself be milked. But when the old man threw off these garments, the cow smelt him and again held back her milk.
Hounds when they track a wild animal often run, not on the trail itself, but at one side, even as far as twenty paces.
When an inexperienced huntsman wants to set his dog on the trail of an animal, and touches the dog’s nose to the trail itself, the dog always goes to one side. The trail smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make the proper distinctions by the trail itself, and cannot tell whether the animal was running one way or the other. It goes to one side and then only it tells by its sense of smell in which direction the scent increases, and so runs after the animal.
It does what we do when any one speaks too loudly in our ear : we move away, and then at a proper dis-tance we distinguish what is said. Or when we are looking at any object which is too near us, we hold it farther from our eyes, and then we look at it.
Dogs recognize one another and communicate with one another by means of smells.
Still more delicate is the sense of smell in insects. The bee flies straight to the flower which it needs. The worm crawls to its leaf. The bug, the flea, the gnat, smell a man distant a hundred thousand times its own length away.
If the atoms emanating from substances and penetrat-ing our nostrils are minute, how infinitesimal must be the Particles which affect the smellers of insects !
Chapter V
TOUCH AND SIGHT
TWIST the index finger with the middle finger and place between these fingers intertwined a small ball in such a way that it touches both, and then shut your eyes. It will seem to you that you are holding two balls. Open your eyes and you will see that it is only one. Your fingers have deceived you, and your eyes have corrected the impression.
Look best of all a little sidewise at a good, clear mirror, it will seem to you that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it. Touch it with your fingers and you will assure yourself that it is a mirror. Your eyes deceived you, but your fingers cor-rected the impression.
Chapter VI
SILKWORM
IN my garden there were some old mulberry trees. They had been set out long ago by my grandfather.
One autumn I was given a quantity 1 of silkworm eggs, and advised to raise the worms and make silk.
These eggs were dark gray and so small that in my zolotnik I counted five thousand eight hundred and thirty-five of them. They were smaller than the heads of the smallest pins. They were perfectly inert; only, when they were crushed, they made a crackling sound.
I heaped them up on my table and had forgotten all about them.
But when spring came, I went one day out into my garden and noticed that the mulberry buds were swelling, and were even in leaf where the sun got to them. Then I remembered about my silkworm eggs, and as soon as I went into the house I began to ex-amine them and scatter them over a wider surface.
The larger Part of them were no longer of a dark gray as before, but some had turned into a light gray color, while others were still brighter, with milky shades. The next morning I went early to look at the eggs, and saw that the worms had already crept out of some of them, and that others were swollen and filled up. They had evidently become conscious in their shells that their nutriment was ready for them.
The little worms were black and hairy, and so small that it was difficult to see them. I examined them with a magnifying glass, and could see that in the egg they lay curled up in little rings, and when they emerged they straightened themselves out.
I went out into the garden to my mulberry tree, gath-ered three handf uls of leaves, and laid them by themselves on the table, and went to make a place for them, as I had been told to do.
While I was getting ready the paper, the worms per-ceived the presence of the leaves on the table, and crawled over to them. I moved the leaves away and tried to attract the worms along, and they, just like dogs attracted by a piece of meat, crept in pursuit of the leaves over the table-cloth, across the pencils, pen-knives, and papers.
Then I cut out a sheet of paper and riddled it with holes made with a knife. I spread the leaves on the paper and laid the paper with the leaves over the worms. The worms crept through the holes; they all mounted on the leaves and immediately set to work feeding.
In the same way I laid a paper covered with leaves over the other worms, and they likewise, as soon as they were hatched, immediately crept through the holes and began to feed.
All the worms on each sheet of paper gathered together and ate the leaves, beginning at the edge. Then, when they had stripped them clean, they began to crawl over the paper in search of new food. Then I would spread over them fresh sheets of perforated paper covered with mulberry leaves, and they would crawl through to the new food.
They lay in my room on a shelf, and when there were no leaves, they would crawl over the shelf, reach-ing the very edge; but they never fell to the floor, although they were blind.
As soon as a worm would come to the abyss, before letting himself down, he would put out of his mouth a little thread and fasten it to the edge, then let himself down, hang suspended, make investigations, and if it pleased him to let himself down, he would let him-self down; but if he wanted to return, then he would pull himself back by means of his web.
During all the twenty-four hours of
