The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1916-05-18
} MORE interesting group
of animals can be found
in the world than those in
the geological garden of
the average farmyard.
The history of their do
mestication ia exceedinp-

ly, humanely, interesting; but still
more interesting is the phenomenon
itself-what it has wrought in the
animals, and what it has left un-
changed. For if domestication has
not changed the leopard's spots. it
is because the leopard has never
been domesticated. There is little
in the style of spots that domestica-
tion cannot change. Color, size
and shape are as clay; habits and
tempers, even, have been made
over. But not the creature itself,
not the wild instructive thing with
in the fur or the feathers; for this
has hardly been touched by domes-
tication.
The tame turkey is essentially a
wild bird, and none of our farm
yard creature shows more strikingly
than he how hardly feather deep is
the domestication which he wears.
He has learned nothing new in his
hundreds of years in the farmyard
Che was domesticated by the Indians
of Mexico long before the discovery
of America); nor has he forgotten
one of the old, wild things he came
from the woods knowing. He ac-
cepts the fence and cluttered farm
yard, turns it into the tall, timbered
river bottom, and lives his primal
forest life among the corn cribs and
Baldwin-apple trees as of old. He
has not turned by one quilts breadth
aside from his original wild ways.
He roosts in the bare tops of the
apple trees or along the ridge pole
of the barn as if the jaguars and
panthers were still prowling for
him, he wakes in the night. gobbles.
ducks, and spreads his round targe
of tail over him to ward off the
swoop of the imaginary owl.
He breaks the hens egg out of
jealousy, in order to prolong the
HONEYMOON: she steals her nest from
him and covers her eggs in leaving
the nest, just as she used to; and
when the small turkey bands of any
neighborhood are gathered into a
flock to be driven to market, as
they still are in the less settled parts
the old flock-spirit returns to them,
and they fall into the old migration
habits of their wild forbears, who
used to gather in great numbers in
the autumn and follow the course
of the riverbanks, some times across
several states as they fed ON the au-
tumn mast.
Stroke kitty the wrong way and
she spits. Yet she sleeps in the
kitchen by the fire. What of it!
The very lap of her mistress has not
counted with the cat in her. The
cat in kitty is wild to the top of her
twitching tail. Watch her If she
hasn't already scratched you-as,
crouched in the grass, she makes her
way toward some unsuspecting bird
A shiver runs through you. You can
feel her claws-so tiger-like is she
80 wild and savage. SO bent on the
kill. Or come upon her at dead of
night in some empty. dimly lighted
alley. She is on the prowl. The
light of the narrow gulchlike street
falls on her with startling large
ness and marks her silent shadow on
the flags. She moves stealthily out
to the corner, and, well within the
shadows stops to glance furtively
up and down the open cross-street.
But the people are all within the
shut doors. There is no one for heI
to devour.
The other day / stood on the
edge of the woods when fox-hound
hot on the fresh trail, came bayine
through the trees toward me, his