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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW ANIMALS TALK ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                            HOW ANIMALS TALK
+
+             And Other Pleasant Studies of Birds and Beasts
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            William J. Long
+
+                               Author of
+                “School of the Woods” “Northern Trails”
+                     “Brier-Patch Philosophy” etc.
+
+                    Illustrations and Decorations by
+                            CHARLES COPELAND
+
+
+
+
+                      HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAP.                                       PAGE
+
+    I.      A Little Dog-Comedy                    3
+    II.     Cries of the Day and Night            10
+    III.    Chumfo, the Super-sense               34
+    IV.     Natural Telepathy                     74
+    V.      The Swarm Spirit                     111
+    VI.     Where Silence Is Eloquent            137
+    VII.    On Getting Acquainted                175
+    VIII.   On Keeping Still                     195
+    IX.     At Close Range                       211
+    X.      The Trail                            237
+    XI.     Woodsy Impressions                   247
+    XII.    Larch-trees and Deer                 256
+    XIII.   Black Mallards                       266
+    XIV.    Memories                             283
+    XV.     Beaver Work                          298
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    The Old Vixen Lies Apart Where She Can Overlook
+      the Play and the Neighborhood                        Frontispiece
+    He Flings Out a Single “Haw!” and the Ducks Spring
+      Aloft on the Instant and Head Swiftly Out to Sea     Facing p. 20
+    A Shadow Moved from the Darker Shadow of an Upturned
+      Root—and a Great Buck Stood Alert on the Open Shore            54
+    They Stood Tense as They Searched the Plain and
+      Surrounding Woods for the Source of Danger                    102
+    The Course He Took Was Entirely Different from That
+      Taken by the Man Who Brought the Vixen Home                   166
+    So Innocent and So Appealing that It is Hard to Keep
+      Your Hands from Him                                           192
+    His Massive Head Thrust Forward as He Tried to
+      Penetrate the Far Distance with His Near-sighted Eyes         252
+    At Such a Time My Pond Seemed to Awaken and Shed Its
+      Silence Like a Garment                                        270
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW ANIMALS TALK
+
+
+I
+
+A LITTLE DOG-COMEDY
+
+
+Did you ever see two friendly dogs meet when one tried to tell the
+other of something he had discovered, when they touched noses, stood
+for a moment in strange, silent parley, then wagged their tails with
+mutual understanding and hurried off together on a canine junket?
+
+That was the little comedy which first drew my attention to the matter
+of animal communication, many years ago, and set my feet in the
+unblazed trail we are now to follow. And a very woodsy trail you shall
+find it, dim and solitary, with plenty of “blind” spots where one may
+easily go astray, and without any promise of what waits at the other
+end of it.
+
+One summer afternoon I was reading by the open window, while my old
+setter, Don, lay at on his side in the shade of a syringa-bush. He had
+scooped out a hollow to suit him, and was enjoying the touch of the
+cool earth when a fat little terrier, a neighbor’s pet, came running
+with evident excitement to wake the old dog up. Don half raised his
+head, recognized his friend Nip and thumped the ground lazily with his
+tail.
+
+“It’s all right, little dog. You’re always excited over something of no
+consequence; but don’t bother me this hot day,” he said, in dog-talk,
+and dropped his head to sleep again.
+
+But Nip was not to be put aside, having something big on his mind. He
+nudged Don sharply, and the old dog sprang to his feet as if
+galvanized. For an interval of perhaps five seconds they stood
+motionless, tense, their noses almost touching; then Don’s plume began
+to wave.
+
+“Oh, I see!” he said; and Nip’s stubby tail whipped violently, as if to
+add, “Thank Heaven you do, at last!” The next moment they were away on
+the jump and disappeared round a corner of the house.
+
+Here was comedy afoot, so I slipped out through the back door to follow
+it. The dogs took no notice of me, and probably had no notion that they
+were observed; for I took pains to keep out of sight till the play was
+over. Through the hay-field they led me, across the pasture lot, and
+over a wall at the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering through
+a chink of the wall, I saw Nip dancing and barking at a rock-pile, and
+between two of the rocks was a woodchuck cornered.
+
+For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that same woodchuck, which had a
+den on the hillside in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some
+garden truck. A dozen times, to my knowledge, the little dog had rushed
+the rascal; but as Nip was fat and the chuck cunning, the chase always
+ended the same way, one comedian diving into the earth with a defiant
+whistle, leaving the other to scratch or bark impotently outside.
+
+Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of such an uneven game; but a
+terrier is not a reasonable dog. At first Nip tried his best to drag
+Don into the affair; but the old setter had long since passed the
+heyday of youth, when any kind of an adventure could interest him. In
+the presence of grouse or woodcock he would still become splendidly
+animate, and then the years would slip from him as a garment; but to
+stupid groundhogs and all such “small deer” he was loftily indifferent.
+He was an aristocrat, of true-blue blood, and I had trained him to let
+all creatures save his proper game severely alone. So, after following
+Nip once and finding nothing more exciting than a hole in the ground,
+with the familiar smell of woodchuck about it, he had left the terrier
+to his own amusement.
+
+When speed failed, or wind, it was vastly amusing to watch Nip try to
+adopt cat-strategy, hiding, creeping, scheming to cut off the enemy’s
+retreat. Almost every day he would have another go at the impossible;
+but he was too fat, too slow, too clumsy, and also too impatient after
+his doggy kind. By a great effort he could hold still when his game
+poked a cautious head out of the burrow for a look all around; but no
+sooner did the chuck begin to move away from his doorway than the
+little dog began to fidget in his hiding-place, and his tail (the one
+part of a dog that cannot lie) would wildly betray his emotions.
+Invariably he made his rush too soon, and the woodchuck whistled into
+his den with time to spare.
+
+On this summer afternoon, however, Nip had better luck or used better
+tactics. Whether he went round the hill and came over the top from an
+unexpected quarter, or lay in wait in his accustomed place with more
+than his accustomed patience, I have no means of knowing. By some new
+device or turn of luck he certainly came between the game and its
+stronghold; whereupon the chuck scuttled down the hill and took refuge
+among the rocks. There Nip’s courage failed him. He was a little dog
+with a big bark; and the sight of the grizzled veteran with back
+against a stone and both flanks protected probably made him realize
+that it is one thing to chase a chuck which runs away, but quite
+another thing to enter his cave while he stands facing you, his beady
+eyes snapping and his big teeth bare. So after a spell of brave barking
+Nip had rushed off to fetch a larger dog.
+
+All that was natural enough, and very doglike; at least it so appeared
+to me, after seeing other little dogs play a similar part; but the
+amazing feature of this particular comedy was that Nip had no
+difficulty in getting help from a champion who had refused to be
+interested up to that critical moment. Through the wall I saw him lead
+Don straight to the rocks. The old dog thrust in his head, yelped once
+as he was bitten, dragged out the chuck, gave him a shake and a
+quieting crunch; then, without the slightest evident concern, he left
+Nip to worry and finish and brag over the enemy.
+
+It is part of the fascination of watching any animal comedy that it
+always leaves you with a question; and the unanswerable question here
+was, How did Nip let the other dog know what he wanted?
+
+If you are intimate enough with dogs to have discovered that they
+depend on their noses for all accurate information, that they have, as
+it were, a smellscape instead of a landscape forever before them, you
+will say at once, “Don must have smelled woodchuck”; but that is a
+merely convenient answer which does not explain or even consider the
+facts. Don already knew the general smell of woodchuck very well, and
+was, moreover, acquainted with the odor of the particular woodchuck to
+which his little dog-chum had been laying siege. He knew it at first
+hand from the creature itself, having once put his nose into the
+burrow; he got a secondary whiff of it every time Nip returned from his
+fruitless digging; and he was utterly indifferent to such foolish
+hunting. Many times before the day of reckoning arrived Nip had rushed
+into the yard in the same excitement, with the same reek of earth and
+woodchuck about him; and, so far as one may judge a dog by his action,
+Don took no interest in the little dog’s story. Yet he was off on the
+instant of hearing that the familiar smell of woodchuck now meant
+something more than a hole in the ground.
+
+That some kind of message passed between the two dogs is, I think,
+beyond a reasonable doubt; and it is precisely this silent and
+mysterious kind of communication (the kind that occurs when your dog
+comes to you when you are reading, looks intently into your face, and
+tells you without words that he wants a drink or that it is time for
+him to be put to bed) that I propose now to make clear. Before we enter
+that trail of silence, however, there is a much simpler language, such
+as is implied in the whistle of a quail or the howl of a wolf, which we
+must try as best we can to interpret. For unless our ears are keen
+enough to distinguish between the food and hunting calls of an animal,
+or between bob-white’s love note and the yodel that brings his
+scattered flock together, it will be idle for us to ask what message or
+impulse a mother wolf sends after a running cub when she lifts her head
+to look at him steadily, and he checks his rush to return to her side
+as if she had made the murky woods echo to her assembly clamor.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+CRIES OF THE DAY AND NIGHT
+
+
+The simplest or most obvious method of animal communication is by
+inarticulate cries, expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleasure,
+and other primal needs or emotions. The wild creatures are mostly
+silent, and so is the bulk of their “talk,” I think; but they
+frequently raise their voice in the morning or evening twilight, and by
+observing them attentively at such a time you may measure the effect of
+their so-called language. Thus, you see plainly that to one call the
+animal cocks his ear and gives answer; at another call he becomes
+wildly excited; a third passes over him without visible result; a
+fourth sets his feet in motion toward the sound or else sends him
+flying away from it, according to its message or import.
+
+That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore, beyond serious doubt;
+but whether they have, like our simplest words, any definite or
+unchanging value is still a question, the probable answer being “No,”
+since a word is the symbol of a thought or an idea; but animals live in
+a world of emotion, and even our human emotions are mostly dumb or
+inarticulate. I must give this negative answer, notwithstanding the
+fact that I have learned to call various birds and beasts, and that I
+can meet Hotspur’s challenge on hearing Glendower boast that he can
+call spirits from the vasty deep:
+
+
+    Why, so can I, or so can any man;
+    But will they come when you do call for them?
+
+
+Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you know how to give the
+right call; but I am still doubtful whether among themselves their
+audible cries are ever quite so intelligible as is their silence.
+
+This question of animal speech has received a different and more
+positive answer, by the way, from a man who has spent many years in
+persistent observation of wild apes and monkeys. After watching the
+lively creatures from his cage in the jungle, attracting them by means
+of various fruits and recording their jabber in a phonograph, he claims
+to have discovered the monkey words for food, water, danger and other
+elementary matters. Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these simian
+words the monkeys of another locality seem to understand them, since
+they run to the proper dish at the word “food” or show evident signs of
+alarm at the word “danger.”
+
+It is doubtless much easier to deny such a conclusion than to prove or
+disprove it; but denial is commonly the first refuge of ignorance and
+the last of dogmatism, and with these we are not concerned. I do not
+know whether Garner claims too much or too little for his monkeys; I
+have never had opportunity to test the matter in the jungle, and the
+caged monkeys with which I have occasionally experimented are too
+debased of habit or too imbecile in their affections to interest one
+who has long dealt with clean wild brutes. At times, however, when I
+have watched a monkey with an organ-grinder, I have noticed that the
+unhappy little beast displays a lively interest in the chitter of
+chimney-swifts—a lingo which to my dull ears sounds remarkably like
+monkey-talk. But that is a mere impression, momentary and of little
+value; while Garner speaks soberly after long and immensely patient
+observation.
+
+To return to first-hand evidence: among wild creatures of my
+acquaintance the crows come nearer than any others to something
+remotely akin to human speech. Several times I have known a tame crow
+to learn a few of our words and, what is much more significant, to show
+his superiority over parrots and other mere mimics by using one or more
+of the words intelligently. There was one crow, for example, that would
+repeat the word “hungry” in guttural fashion whenever he thought it was
+time for him to dine. He used this word very frequently when his dinner
+or supper hour drew nigh, giving me the impression, since he did not
+confuse it with two other words of his vocabulary, that he associated
+the word with the notion of food or of eating; and if this impression
+be true to fact, it indicates more than appears on the surface. We
+shall come to the wild crows and their “talk” presently; the point here
+is, that if this bird could use a new human word in association with a
+primal need, there is nothing to prevent him from using a sound or
+symbol of his own in the same way. In other words, he must have some
+small faculty of language.
+
+Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy named Pharaoh Necho because
+of his hippety-hop walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games,
+play, social gatherings of every kind. To excitement from any source,
+whether bird or brute or human, he was as responsive as a weather-vane;
+but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to something that looked like
+joking, since he could never see a contemplative cat or a litter of
+sleepy little pigs without going out of his way to tweak a tail and
+stir up trouble. At times he would watch, keeping out of sight in a
+leafy tree or on the roof of the veranda, till Tabby, the house cat,
+came out and sat looking over the yard, her tail stretched out behind
+her. If she lay down to sleep, or sat with tail curled snugly around
+her forepaws, she was never molested; but the moment her tail was out
+of her sight and mind Necho saw the chance for which he had apparently
+been waiting. Gliding noiselessly down behind the unconscious cat he
+would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting tail with his beak. It was a
+startling blow, and at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed
+he would fly off, “chuckling” immoderately.
+
+When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys assembled he would neglect even
+his dinner to join them; and presently, without ever having been
+taught, he announced himself master of a new art by yelling, “Ya-hoo!
+Come on!” which was the rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood.
+He said this in ludicrous fashion, but unmistakably to those who knew
+him. Sometimes he would croak the words softly to himself, as if
+memorizing them or pleased at the sound; but for the most part he
+waited till boys were gathering for a swim or a ball game, when he
+would launch himself into flight and go skimming down the road,
+whooping out his new cry exultantly. What meaning he attached to the
+words, whether of boys or fun or mere excitement, I have no means of
+knowing.
+
+After learning this much of our speech Necho took to the wild,
+following a call of the blood, I think; for it was springtime when he
+disappeared, and the crows’ mating clamor sounded from every woodland.
+These birds are said to kill every member of their tribe who returns to
+them after living with men, and the saying may have some truth in it. I
+have noticed that many tame crows are like tame baboons in that they
+seem mortally afraid of their wild kinsmen; but Necho was apparently an
+exception. If he had any trouble when first he returned to his flock,
+the matter was settled without our knowledge, and during the following
+autumn there was evidence that he was again in good standing. Long
+afterward, as I roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty “Ya-hoo! Come
+on!” from where he led a yelling rabble of crows to chivvy a sleeping
+owl or jeer at a running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry sounded
+over the tree-tops when I could not see him or know what mischief was
+afoot. He never returned to the house, and never again joined our play
+or allowed a boy to come near him.
+
+Not all crows have this “gift of speech”; and the fact that one tame
+crow learns to use a few English words, while five or six others hold
+fast to their own lingo, has led to the curious belief that, if you
+want to make a crow talk, you must split his tongue. How such a belief
+originated is a mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread when I
+was a boy that no sooner was a young crow taken from a nest than
+jack-knives were sharpened, and the leathery end of the crow’s tongue
+was solemnly split after grave debate whether a seventh or a third part
+was the proper medicine. If the crow talked after that, it was proof
+positive that the belief was true; and if he remained dumb, it was a
+sign that there was something wrong in the splitting; which is
+characteristic of a large part of our natural-history reasoning. The
+debates I have heard or read on the “unanswerable” question of how a
+chipmunk digs a hole without leaving any earth about the entrance (a
+question with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly suggestive of
+the split-tongue superstition of crow language.
+
+Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe, only a small proportion
+showed any tendency to repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I
+judge, the same crows that in a wild state may occasionally be heard
+whistling like a jay, or “barking” or “hooting” or making some other
+call which ordinary crows do not or cannot make, and which shows an
+individual talent of mimicry. This last, which I have repeatedly
+observed among wild crows, is a very different matter from speech; but
+from the fact that these mimics learn to use a few English words more
+or less intelligently one might not be far wrong in concluding that
+every crow has in his brain a small undeveloped nest of cells
+corresponding to our “bump” of language.
+
+A closer observation of the wild birds may confirm this possibility.
+Thus, when you hear a solitary crow in a tree-top crying, “Haw! Haw!”
+monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail every time he
+repeats it, you may be sure that somewhere within range of his eye or
+voice a flock of his own kind are on the ground, feeding. That this
+particular haw is a communication to his fellows, telling them that the
+sentinel is on watch and all is well, seems to me very probable. There
+are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously resolve the whole phenomenon
+into blind chance or accident; but that does not square very well with
+the intelligence of crow nature as I have observed it; nor does it
+explain the fact that once, when I avoided the sentinel and crept near
+enough to shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly guarding,
+the rest were no sooner out of danger than they whirled upon the
+recreant and beat him savagely to the ground.
+
+If you are interested enough to approach any crow-sentinel in a casual
+or indifferent kind of way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly
+or directly), you must note that his haw changes perceptibly while you
+are yet far off. It is no longer formal or monotonous; nor is it
+uttered with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly see. You
+would pronounce and spell the cry exactly as before (it should be
+written aw or haw, not caw, for there is no consonant sound in it); but
+if your ears are keen, they will detect an entirely different accent or
+inflection, as they detect different accents and meanings when a
+sailor’s casual or vibrant “Sail ho!” sings down from the crow-nest of
+a ship. Now run a few steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and
+creep, and instantly the haw changes again. This time the accent is
+sharper even to your dull ears; and hardly is the cry uttered when all
+the crows of the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading swiftly away to
+the woods and safety.
+
+Apparently, therefore, this simple haw of the crow is like a root word
+of certain ancient languages, the Chinese, for example, which has
+several different intonations to express different ideas, but which all
+sound alike to foreign ears, and which are spelled alike when they
+appear in foreign print. To judge by the crows’ action, it is certain
+that their elementary haw has at least three distinct accents to
+express as many different meanings: one of “all’s well,” another of
+“watch out,” and a third of “be off!” Moreover, the birds seem to
+understand these different meanings as clearly as we understand plain
+English; they feed quietly while haw means one thing, or spring aloft
+when it means another; and though you watch them a lifetime you will
+see nothing to indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in their
+minds as to the sentinel’s message.
+
+Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the
+fox and many other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly,
+or at least a part of it which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the
+seacoast in winter you hear the crows hawing continually as they follow
+the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes on, loudly or
+sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though
+they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless
+duck and eat him to the bones whenever they have a chance. Because of
+this dangerous propensity you would naturally expect the water-fowl to
+be suspicious of the black freebooter and to be alert when they see or
+hear him; but no sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you learn
+a thing to make you respect the crow, and perhaps to make you wonder
+how much or how very little you know of the ways of the wood folk.
+
+Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards especially, like to come
+ashore every day in a secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to
+rest or preen or take a quiet nap in company. It is a tempting sight to
+see a score or a hundred of the splendid birds in a close group, their
+heads mostly tucked under their wings; but it is practically impossible
+to stalk them, for the reason that the crows are forever ranging the
+shore, and a crow never passes a group of sleeping ducks without
+lifting his flight to take a look over the bank behind them. What his
+motive is no man can say; we only note that, in effect, he stands
+sentinel for the ducks against a common enemy, as he habitually does
+for his own kind. There is no escaping that keen, searching glance of
+his; he sees you creeping through the beach-grass or hiding behind a
+bush. He flings out a single haw! with warning, danger, derision in it;
+and now the same ducks that have heard him all day without concern
+spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.
+
+The crows have several other variations of the same cry, expressive of
+other matters, which all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but
+which are meaningless to human ears. When I imitate the distress-call
+of a young crow, for example, I can bring a flock over my head at
+almost any time, the only condition being that I keep well concealed.
+At the first glimpse of a man in hiding they sheer off, and it is
+seldom that I can bring them back a second time to the same spot; yet I
+have a companion, one who utters a call very much like mine to ordinary
+ears, who can bring the flock back to him even after they have seen him
+and suffered at his hands. More than once I have stood beside him in
+the woods and fired a gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the
+flock pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does he begin to talk
+crow-talk than back they come again. What he says to them that I do not
+or cannot say is something that only the crows understand.
+
+It is commonly assumed that they come to such a call because they hear
+in it a cry for help from one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly
+true at times; for a help-call, especially from a cub or nestling, is a
+summons to which most animals and birds instinctively respond. And,
+strangely enough, the smaller they are the braver they seem to be. A
+mother-partridge has more than once flown in my face or beaten me with
+her wings, while “fierce” hawks, owls and eagles have merely circled
+around me at a safe distance when I came near their young. In the
+majority of cases, however, I think that birds come to a distress-call
+simply because the excitement of an individual spreads to all creatures
+within sight or hearing, just as a crowd of men or women will become
+excited and rush to a common center before they know what the stir is
+all about.
+
+In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary to cry like a
+distressed young crow to bring a flock over your head. The imitated
+hawing of an old crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper
+excitement into it. Again, on any summer day you will hear in your own
+yard the pip-pip of arriving or departing robins. The same call is
+uttered by both sexes, at all times and in all places; yet if you
+listen closely you must note that there is immense variety in the
+accent or inflection of even this simple sound. The call is clear,
+ringing, joyous when the robins first arrive in the spring; it is
+subdued when they gather for the autumn flight; it is sleepy or
+querulous when they stand full-fed by the nest, and most business-like
+when they launch themselves into flight, which is the moment when you
+are most sure to hear it. A robin utters this call hundreds of times
+every day, in one accent or another, and neither the other robins nor
+their feathered neighbors seem to pay any attention to it; but when a
+red squirrel comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin sends forth
+the same pip-pip with a different intonation, then the response is
+instantaneous. The alarm spreads swiftly over wood and field; clamor
+uprises, and birds of many species come rushing in from all directions;
+not because they have heard that Meeko is again killing young robins
+(at least, it does not seem so to me), but because excitement is afoot,
+and they are bound to join it or find out about it before they can
+settle down comfortably to their own affairs.
+
+There is an interesting way by which you may test this contagion of
+excitement for yourself. Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other
+bird neighborhood in the early morning, preferably at a season when
+every nest has eggs or fledglings in it; press two fingers against your
+lips and draw the breath sharply between them, repeating the squeaky
+cry as rapidly as possible. The sound has a peculiarly exciting quality
+even to human ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer it), and
+birds come to it as boys to a fire alarm. In a few moments you may have
+them streaming in from the four quarters of bird world, all highly
+excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some innocent nest from snake
+or crow or squirrel. Because the response is most electric at the
+season when fledglings are most helpless, you are apt to think that
+this call of yours is mistaken by mother birds for a cry for help. That
+may be true; but be not too sure about it. The fledglings themselves
+will come almost as readily to the call when the nesting season is over
+and gone.
+
+I have tried that same exciting summons in many places, wild or
+settled, and commonly but not invariably with the same result, as if it
+were a word from the universal bird language. Once in a secluded valley
+of northern Italy I saw a hunter with his gun, and promptly forgot my
+own errand in order to chum with him and find out what he had learned
+of the wood folk. He was hunting birds to eat. “Those birds there!” he
+said, pointing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, but which
+seemed pitifully small game to me. Presently I learned that he could
+not shoot flying, and was having such bad luck that, he said, the devil
+surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling, companionable loafer, and
+for a time I tagged after him, watching him amusedly as he made careful
+but vain stalks of little birds that seemed to have been made wild by
+much hunting. In a spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also to
+test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the hunter to hide with
+me in a thicket while I gave the call which had so often brought the
+feathered folk of my own New England woods. At my cry a wisp of birds
+whirled in to light at the edge of the covert; the Italian’s gun
+roared; and then I discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.
+
+I have since had many an uncomfortable moment at the thought of how
+many lovely songsters may have paid with their lives for that ungodly
+experiment; for my companion hailed me as a master Nimrod from the New
+World; and when I refused, on the plea of bad luck, to teach him the
+call, I heard him give a distressingly good imitation of it. Yet the
+experiment seemed to prove that everywhere birds quickly catch the
+contagion of excitement; that in many cases they respond to a call
+because it stirs their anger or curiosity rather than because it
+conveys any definite summons for help or warning of danger.
+
+When you open your ears among the beasts you hear precisely the same
+story; that is, certain cries apparently have definite meaning, like
+the accented haw of a crow, while others convey and also spread a wild
+emotion. Of all beasts, the wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most
+intelligent, and these seem to have definite calls for food or help or
+hunting or assembly. Such calls are strictly tribal, I think, like the
+dialects of Indians, since the call of a coyote is quite different from
+the call of a timber wolf even when both intend to convey the same
+meaning. A friend of mine, an excellent mimic, who spent many years in
+the West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after drawing them
+within range by sending forth the food-call in winter; but though he
+knows also the food-call of the timber wolf, he has never once deceived
+these larger brutes by his imitation of it; nor has he ever seen a wolf
+of one species respond to the food or hunting call of another.
+
+Like most other wild animals, timid or savage, the sensitive wolves all
+respond, but much more warily than the birds, to almost any
+inarticulate cry expressive of emotional excitement; just as your dog,
+who is yesterday’s wolf, grows uneasy when you whine in your nose like
+a distressed puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or window,
+when a wild ki-yi breaks out in the distance. Indeed, it is easier to
+keep a boy from a fire than a dog from a crowd or excitement of any
+kind; and the same is true of their wild relatives, though the wariness
+of the latter keeps them hidden where you cannot follow their action.
+The greatest commotion I ever witnessed in a timber-wolf pack was
+occasioned by the moaning howl of a wounded wolf on a frozen lake in
+midwinter. It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever recorded up
+to that time, and every time they heard it the grim beasts ran wildly
+here and there, howling like lunatics. Then, when the wounded one grew
+quiet, they would approach and sniff him all over; after which some
+would sit on their tails and watch him closely, while others circled
+about on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search of a lost
+trail.
+
+Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny brutes near me in the
+North, I have tried to call them or make them answer by giving what
+seemed to me a very good imitation of their cries; but seldom has a
+howl of mine been returned. On the contrary, the brutes almost always
+stop their howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if they were
+listening and saying, “What under the moon is that now?” Then old
+Tomah, the Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl exactly
+like mine, but with something in it which I cannot fathom or master,
+and instantly from the snow-filled woods comes back the wild wolf
+answer.
+
+Likewise, I have called moose in many different localities, and am
+persuaded that it makes very little difference what kind of whine or
+grunt or bellow you utter, since anything resembling a moose-call will
+do the trick if you know how to put the proper feeling into your voice.
+After listening carefully to many callers, I note this characteristic
+difference: that one man invariably makes the game wary, suspicious,
+fearful, no matter how finely he calls; while another in the same
+place, with the same trumpet and apparently with the same call, manages
+to put something into his voice, something primal, emotional and
+essentially animal, which brings a bull moose hurriedly to investigate.
+Thus it happens that the worst caller I ever heard—worst in that he had
+no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose habits, and uttered a
+blatant, monstrous roar unlike anything a sane man ever heard in the
+heavens above or the earth beneath—was still the most successful in
+getting his game into the open. Three nights in succession I heard him
+call in a region where moose were over-shy from much hunting, and where
+my own imitation of the animal’s natural voice brought small response.
+In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all that were within hearing,
+I think; and every one of the great brutes threw caution to the dogs
+and came out on the jump.
+
+From such observations, and from others which I have not chronicled, I
+judge that the higher orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which
+stand for definite things, or mental images of things, but that their
+ordinary cries merely project an emotion or excitement in such a way
+that it stirs a similar emotion in other birds or beasts of the same
+species; just as the sound of hearty laughter invariably stirs the
+feeling of mirth in men who hear it, or any inarticulate cry of fear
+sets human feet in motion—toward the cry if the hearer be brave, or
+away from it if he be of cowardly disposition. Yet even among men, who
+by civilization have lost some of their natural virtues, the primal
+impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the raccoon, the man’s first
+impulse is to rush to his distressed or excited fellows. If he turns
+and runs the other way, it means simply that his artificial habit or
+training has deadened his natural instincts.
+
+In speaking of “man” here I refer to the genus homo, not to the male
+specimen thereof. Among brutes most of the natural instincts are the
+same in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind, and the instincts
+of the female are commonly the stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed,
+or think I have noticed, this difference: when a cry of distress is
+uttered in the woods, the first bird or beast to appear is almost
+always a female; but the male is quicker on his toes at a battle-yell
+or a senseless clamor.
+
+This last is a personal impression, and cannot well be verified. The
+only record I have which might pass for evidence in the matter comes
+from my observation of the crows. In the spring many of these
+questionable birds indulge their taste for eggs or tender flesh and
+soon become incurable nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot
+them, to save other and more useful birds. The method is very simple:
+one hides and calls, and takes the crows as they appear in swift
+flight, the number shot being commonly limited to one or two at a time.
+And I have observed repeatedly, at different times and in different
+localities, that when I use the distress-call of a young crow as a
+decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a female. This is the
+common rule, with occasional exceptions to point or emphasize it. But
+whenever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an owl, or send forth
+a senselessly excited hawing, almost invariably the first crow to come
+whooping over is a long-winged and glossy old male.
+
+Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity on my part to kill crows
+in this fashion? Perhaps it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it
+certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame the crows for their
+taste in eggs or nestlings; but one must note that they destroy an
+enormous number of insectivorous birds, and that the harm they do in
+this respect outweighs their usefulness in destroying field-mice and
+beetles. I write this with regret; for I admire the crow, and consider
+him as, of all birds, the most intelligent and the most considerate of
+his own kind. I know that it is a moot question whether the crow does
+more harm or good, and that some naturalists have settled it in his
+favor; but I have too often caught him plundering nests in the
+springtime to be much impressed by his alleged usefulness at other
+seasons. I think that he may have been once useful in preserving the
+so-called balance of nature; but that balance is now dangerously
+unequal. The crow has flourished even in well-settled regions, thanks
+to his superior wit, while other useful birds have fearfully
+diminished, and this at a time when our orchards and gardens call more
+and more insistently for their help. Because of his disproportionate
+numbers the crow now appears to me, like our destructive and useless
+cats, as a positive menace in a country where he once occupied a modest
+or inconspicuous place—such a place as he still occupies in the
+wilderness, where I meet him but rarely, and where I am glad to leave
+him in peace, since he does not seriously interfere with his more
+beautiful or more useful neighbors. But we are wandering from the dim
+trail of animal communication, which we set out to follow.
+
+The inarticulate but variously accented cries of which we have spoken
+constitute the only animal language to which our naturalists have thus
+far paid any attention; and doubtless some of them would object to the
+use of the word “language” in such a connection. In all matters of real
+natural history, however (real, that is, in the sense of dealing at
+first hand with individual birds or beasts), I am much more inclined to
+listen to old Tomah, who says, when I ask him whether animals can talk:
+“Talk? Course he kin talk! Eve’ting talk in hees own way. Hear me now
+make-um dat young owl talk.” And, stepping outside the circle of
+camp-fire light, Tomah utters a hoot, which is answered at a distance
+every time he tries it. After parleying with the stranger in this
+tentative fashion, Tomah sends forth a different call; and immediately,
+as if in ready acceptance of an invitation, a barred owl glides like a
+gray shadow into a tree over our heads. I have heard that same old
+Indian use horned-owl talk, wolf and beaver and woodpecker talk, and
+several other dialects of the wood folk, in the same fascinating and
+convincing way.
+
+One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the day or night have
+their meaning, if only one knows how to hear them; yet they constitute
+but a part, and probably a very small part, of the animal’s habitual
+communication with his fellows. The bulk of it appears to be of that
+silent kind which passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have reason
+to believe, is the common language of the whole animal kingdom.
+
+To prove such a matter is plainly impossible. Even to investigate it
+frankly is to enter a shadowy realm between the conscious and
+subconscious states, where no process can be precisely followed, and
+where the liability to error is always present. Let us therefore begin
+on familiar ground by examining certain phenomena which we cannot
+explain, to be sure, but which have been observed frequently enough to
+give us confidence that we are dealing with realities. I refer
+especially to that curious warning or “feeling” of impending danger,
+which is supposed (erroneously, I think) to depend upon the so-called
+sixth sense of animals and men.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+CHUMFO, THE SUPER-SENSE
+
+
+For the word chumfo I am indebted to a tribe of savages living near
+Lake Mweru, in Africa, and am grateful to them not only for naming a
+thing which has no name in any civilized language, but also for an
+explanation of its function in the animal economy. We shall come to the
+definition of the word presently, after we have some clear notion of
+the thing for which the word stands. As Thomas à Kempis says, if I
+remember correctly, “It is better to feel compassion than to know how
+to define it.”
+
+By way of approach to our subject, let it be understood that chumfo
+refers in a general way to the animal’s extraordinary powers of sense
+perception, which I would call his “sensibility” had not our novelists
+bedeviled that good word by making it the symbol of a false or
+artificial emotionalism. Every wild creature is finely “sensible” in
+the true meaning of the word, his sensitiveness being due to the fact
+that there is nothing dead or even asleep in nature; the natural animal
+or the natural man is from head to foot wholly alive and awake. And
+this because every atom of him, or every cell, as a biologist might
+insist, is of itself sentient and has the faculty of perception. Not
+till you understand that first principle of chumfo will your natural
+history be more than a dry husk, a thing of books or museums or stuffed
+skins or Latin names, from which all living interest has departed.
+
+I am sometimes asked, “What is the most interesting thing you find in
+the woods?” the question calling, no doubt, for the name of some bird
+or beast or animal habit that may challenge our ignorance or stir our
+wonder. The answer is, that whether you search the wood or the city or
+the universe, the only interesting thing you will ever find anywhere is
+the thrill and mystery of awakening life. That the animal is alive, and
+alive in a way you ought to be but are not, is the last and most
+fascinating discovery you are likely to make in nature’s kingdom. After
+years of intimate observation, I can hardly meet a wild bird or beast
+even now without renewed wonder at his aliveness, his instant response
+to every delicate impression, as if each moment brought a new message
+from earth or heaven and he must not miss it or the consequent
+enjoyment of his own sensations. The very sleep of an animal, when he
+seems ever on the thin edge of waking, when he is still so in touch
+with his changing world that the slightest strange sound or smell or
+vibration brings him to his feet with every sense alert and every
+muscle ready,—all this is an occasion of marvel to dull men, who must
+be called twice to breakfast, or who meet the violent clamor of an
+alarm-clock with the drowsy refrain:
+
+
+    Yet a little sleep, a little slumber,
+    A little more folding of the hands to sleep!
+
+
+You will better understand what I mean by the animal’s aliveness, his
+uncloying pleasure in the sensation of living, if you can forget any
+tragical theories or prejudices of animal life which you have chanced
+to read, and then frankly observe the first untrammeled creature you
+meet in the outdoor world. Here at your back door, for example, is a
+flock of birds that come trooping from the snowy woods to your winter
+feast of crumbs. See how they dart hither and yon between mouthfuls, as
+if living creatures could not be still or content with any one thing,
+even a good thing, in a world of endless variety. Look again, more
+closely, and see how they merely taste of the abundance on your table,
+and straightway leave it for a morsel that the wind blows from under
+their beaks, and that they are bound to have if it takes all winter.
+Every other minute they flit to a branch above the table, look about
+alertly, measure the world once more, make sure of the dog that he is
+asleep, and of the sky that it holds no hawk; then they wipe their
+bills carefully, using a twig for a napkin, and down to the table they
+go to begin all over again. So every bite is for them a feast renewed,
+a feast with all the spices of the new, the fresh, the unexpected and
+the adventurous in it.
+
+Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote from men, here is a deer
+slipping shadow-like through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting
+twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and keeping tabs on every
+living or moving or growing thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems
+to float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, listening,
+testing the air-smells as one would appreciate a varied landscape,
+playing Columbus to every nook or brush-pile and finding in it
+something that no explorer ever found before. Such is the natural way
+of a fox, which makes a devious trail because so many different odors
+attract him here or there.
+
+In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to understand the singing
+lines from “Saul”:
+
+
+    How good is man’s life, the mere living, how fit to employ
+    All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
+
+
+It is to understand also the spirit of Browning, who is hardly a world
+poet, to be sure, but who has the distinction of being the only famous
+poet who is always alive and awake. Homer nods; Dante despairs and
+mourns; Shakespeare has a long period of gloom when he can write only
+terrible tragedies of human failure; other great poets have their weary
+days or melancholy hours, but Browning sings ever a song of abounding
+life. Even his last, the Epilogue to “Asolando,” is not a swan-song,
+like Tennyson’s; it is rather a bugle-call, and it sounds not the
+“taps” of earth, but the “reveille” of immortality. But we are
+wandering from our woodsy trail.
+
+Those who make an ornithology of mere feathers, or who imagine they
+know an animal because they know what the scientists have said about
+him, see in this instant responsiveness of the wild creature only a
+manifestation of fear, and almost every book of birds or beasts repeats
+the story of terror and tragedy. Yet every writer of such books
+probably owns a dog that displays in less degree (because he is less
+alive) every single symptom of the wild creature, including his alleged
+fears; and the dog, far from leading a tragic or terror-governed life,
+is hilariously disposed to make an adventure or a picnic of every new
+excursion afield. Moreover, if one of these portrayers of animal fears
+or tragedies has ever had an adventure of his own; if he has penetrated
+a wild region on tiptoe, or run the white rapids in a canoe, or heard
+the wind sing in his ears on a breakneck gallop across country, or
+trailed a bear to his covert, or hunted bandits in the open, or
+followed the bugles when they blew for war,—then he must know well that
+these unforgetable moments, when a man’s senses all awaken and his
+nerves tingle and he treads the earth like a buck in spring, are the
+only times in a man’s dull life when he feels himself wholly alive and
+a man. That a naturalist should forget this when he sees an alert wild
+animal, and deny his dog and his own experience of life by confounding
+alertness with fear, is probably due not so much to his own blindness
+as to his borrowed notions, such as the “struggle for existence,” the
+“reign of terror,” and other hallucinations which have been packed into
+his head in the name of science or natural history.
+
+Just to take a walk with your dog may be a revelation to you, as most
+simple matters are when you dare to view them for yourself without
+prejudice. In fact, what is any revelation or discovery but seeing
+things as they are? This daily walk over familiar ground, which bores
+you because you must take it for exercise, leaving out of it the fun
+which is the essential element of any exercise, is to your dog another
+joyous and expectant exploration of the Indes. He explored the same
+ground yesterday, to be sure, but all sorts of revolutions and
+migrations take place overnight; and if he be a real dog, not a spoiled
+pet, he will uncover more surprises on the familiar road than you
+uncover in the morning newspaper. Follow him sympathetically as he
+finds endlessly interesting things where you find little but boredom,
+and you may learn that there are three marked differences between you
+and a normal animal: first, that he keeps the spirit of play, which you
+have well-nigh lost; second, that he lives in his sensations and is
+happy, while you dwell mostly in your thoughts and postpone happiness
+for the future; and third, that he is alive now, every moment, and you
+used to be alive the day before yesterday.
+
+In all this you are simply typical of our unnatural civilization, which
+begins to enumerate or describe us as so many thousand “souls,”
+doubtless because every single body of us is moribund or asleep.
+Consider our noses, for example. They are the seat of a wonderful
+faculty, more dependable than sight or hearing; they are capable of
+giving us sensations more varied than those of color, and almost as
+enjoyable as those of harmony; they can be easily trained so as to
+recognize every tree and plant and growing thing by its delicate
+fragrance; they would add greatly to our safety and convenience, as
+well as to our enjoyment, did we use them as nature intended; yet so
+thoroughly neglected are they, as a rule, that it takes a burning rag
+or a jet of escaping coal-gas to rouse them to the immense and varied
+world of odors in which an animal lives continually.
+
+At present I am the alleged owner of a young setter, Rab, who has
+reached the stage of development when he thinks he owns me. For after
+you have properly trained a dog, there comes a brief time when he
+discovers with joy that he can make you do things for him; and then he
+is like a child who discovers that he can make you talk (that is, show
+some sign of life) by asking you questions. And this young setter has,
+I am convinced, a very low opinion of human aliveness, since there is
+never a day when he does not give me a hint that he considers me a poor
+cripple—excepting, perhaps, the rare days when I take him
+woodcock-hunting, when he mildly approves of me.
+
+One night, after waiting a long time at my feet till I should become
+animate, Rab followed me hopefully into the dark kitchen, where he had
+never before been allowed to go. I heard his steps behind me only as
+far as the door, and thought he was afraid to enter; but when I turned
+on the light, there he stood in the doorway, “frozen” into a beautiful
+point, his head upturned to a bell and battery on the wall. Presently a
+mouse hopped from the battery into a waste-basket on the floor, and Rab
+pointed the thing stanchly, his whole body quivering with delight when
+a faint odor stole to his nostrils or a rustle of paper to his ears.
+From the basket the mouse streaked to the coal-hod, and Rab pointed
+that, too, and then a crack under a door, and a yawning closet drawer.
+“My bones!” he said, trying to claw the drawer open. “This is a good
+place; something is alive here!” Then he came over and sat in front of
+me, looking up in my face, his head twisted sideways, to demand why I
+had so long kept him out of the only part of the house that was not
+wholly dormant.
+
+Though the adventure was twelve months ago, “age cannot wither it, nor
+custom stale its infinite variety,” for every night Rab comes to me
+where I am reading, nudges my elbow, paws my book, sits in front of me
+to yawn hugely, gives me no peace, in short, till I follow him to the
+kitchen for another go at the waste-basket, the coal-hod and all the
+closet drawers. It is of no avail to leave the doors open; he will not
+go unless I join him in the enjoyment of something that lives. A short
+time since we flushed another mouse in the cellar, whither he followed
+me to look after the furnace; and now he pesters me by day as well as
+by night whenever he finds me, as he thinks, wrapped in unmanly
+lethargy.
+
+With all his vivacity this young setter, who seems so alert among mere
+men, becomes a dull creature the moment you compare him with his wild
+kindred. He cannot begin to interpret the world through his senses as
+they instantly interpret it, and he would starve to death where they
+live on the fat of the land. Once on a forest trail I came upon him
+pointing stanchly at the edge of a little opening that lumbermen had
+made for yarding logs. Just across the opening, where a jumper road
+joined the yard, stood a noble buck, and he was “pointing,” too, for he
+was face to face with such a creature as he had never before seen. Both
+animals were like statues, so motionless did they stand; but there was
+this difference, that the dog rested solidly on earth and might have
+been carved from marble, while the buck seemed to rest on air and to be
+compounded of some ethereal essence. His eyes fairly radiated light and
+color. The velvet on his antlers seemed to grow as I looked upon it,
+like the velvet moss in which the fairies are said to rest. Every hair
+of him from nose to tail tip was gloriously alive. A moment only he
+stood, but long enough for me to carry a picture of him forever
+afterward; then he bounded up the old road, and Rab came running over
+to ask me what new thing he had discovered.
+
+This marvelous alertness of the natural animal is commonly attributed
+to the fact that his physical senses are more acute than ours; but that
+is true only of some particular sense of a certain creature. The wolf’s
+nose, the deer’s ear, the vulture’s eye,—these are probably keener than
+any similar human organ; but, on the other hand, a man’s eye is very
+much keener for details than the eye of wolf or deer; his senses of
+touch and taste are finer than anything to be found among the lower
+orders, and the average of his five senses is probably the highest upon
+earth. Yet the animal is more responsive to impressions of the external
+world, and this is due, I think, to the fact that he lives more in his
+sensations; that he is not cumbered, as we are, by inner phenomena;
+that he is free from pain, care, fear, regret, anxiety and other mental
+complexities; that he is accustomed to hear (that is, to receive
+vibrations) through his feet or his skin quite as much as through his
+ears; and that his whole body, relaxed and at ease, often becomes a
+first-class receiving instrument for what we call sense impressions.
+
+As an example of this last, note the wild creature’s response to every
+change of air pressure, a response so immediate and certain that one
+might accurately forestall the barometer by observing the action of
+birds, or even of chickens, which anticipate a storm long before your
+face has noted the moist wind or your eye the rain-cloud. In the winter
+woods I have often seen a deer feeding greedily (quite at variance with
+his usual dainty tasting) at an hour long before or long after his
+accustomed time, and as I traveled wider I would find other deer doing
+the same thing. I used to wonder at this, till I noticed that such
+unusual action was always followed by a storm—not an ordinary brief
+snowfall, to which deer pay little attention beyond seeking shelter
+while it lasts, but a severe storm or blizzard, during which most
+animals lie quiet for a whole day, or even two or three days, without
+stirring abroad for food.
+
+Whether an element of forethought enters into this act of “stuffing”
+themselves before a storm, or whether it is wholly instinctive, like
+the bear’s change of diet before he dens for his winter sleep, is a
+question which does not concern us, since nobody can answer it. In
+either case the deer have felt, as surely as our most sensitive
+instruments, not only the decreasing pressure of the air but also its
+increasing moisture.
+
+That such sensitiveness is not of any one organ, but rather of the
+whole body, becomes more evident when we study the lower orders—fishes,
+for example, which may winter under a dozen fathoms of water and a
+two-foot blanket of ice, but which nevertheless respond to the changing
+air currents far above their heads. Once on a northern lake, in March,
+I kept tabs on some trout for fourteen consecutive days, and it seemed
+that they moved from deep to shallow water or back again whenever the
+wind veered to the proper quarter. I had a water-hole cut in the thick
+ice, and, finding a trout under it one day, I kept a couple of lines
+with minnows there constantly. The hole was in a shallow place, over a
+sandy bottom, and by putting my face to the opening, with a blanket
+over my head to exclude the upper light, I could dimly see the shadows
+move in from deep water. On six scattering days, when the wind came
+light or strong from the south, two of the days bringing snow, the
+trout evidently moved shoreward, since I caught them abundantly, as
+many as I needed and some to spare; but on the other eight days, some
+clear and some stormy, when the wind was north of east or west, not a
+trout was seen or caught, and only once was a minnow of mine missing.
+
+It may be said that the trout simply followed their food-supply; but I
+doubt this, since trout apparently feed very little in winter; and in
+formulating any theory of the matter one must account for the fact that
+big fish or little fish moved shoreward whenever the wind blew south.
+The phenomenon may appear less foreign to our experience, though not
+less mysterious to our reason, if we remember that an old wound or a
+corn may by its aching foretell a storm, or that a person suffering
+from nervous prostration may by his sudden depression know that the
+barometer will soon be falling.
+
+The same bodily sensitiveness appears unchanged in our domestic
+animals. I once saw a deer and her two fawns kneel down in the woods,
+and watched them in astonishment as they rested for some time on their
+knees, as if in supplication; then the ground rocked under me, and I
+knew that their feet had felt the tremor of an earthquake long before I
+was sensible of it. Such an observation seemed wonderful to me till I
+learned that our sheep are equally sensitive in their elastic hoofs,
+and that our pigs respond not only to vibration of earth or air, but
+also to some finer vibration set in motion, apparently, by human
+excitement.
+
+Moreover, I have known one dog, old and half deaf, that, whether asleep
+or awake, would respond to the faint tremor of his master’s automobile
+before it came into sight or hearing. And what there is in the tremor
+of one machine to distinguish it from another of the same make and
+power is something that the unaided ear can hardly measure. The dog
+lived under a hilltop, on a highway over which scores of automobiles
+passed daily; and on holidays, when his master was at home, the scores
+would increase to hundreds. He would sleep for hours on the veranda,
+paying no heed to the noise or smell or dust of the outrageous things,
+till suddenly he would jump up, bark, and start for the gate; and in a
+moment or two we would see the master’s auto rise into sight over the
+brow of the hill.
+
+
+
+The instant response of deer or dog to minute external impressions,
+though startling enough, is probably wholly physical, a matter of
+vibrations on one side and of nerves on the other; but there are other
+phenomena of sensitiveness (and these bring us nearer to our trail of
+animal communication) for which it is much harder to find a
+satisfactory physical explanation. Such is the feeling or warning of
+unsensed danger, or the premonition that some one unseen and unheard is
+approaching—a phenomenon which seems to be common among animals, to
+judge from repeated observation, and which appears often enough in
+human beings to make not only the inquisitive Society for Psychical
+Research but almost every thoughtful man or woman take some note of it.
+
+For example, a man awake in his bed sees his son, whom he thinks safely
+ashore in a foreign country, fall overboard from a steamer to his
+death, at the very hour when the son did fall overboard, as was
+afterward learned. Or a woman, the wife of a sea-captain, sitting on
+the veranda at home in the bright moonlight, sees the familiar earth
+vanish in a world of water, and looks suddenly upon her husband’s ship
+as it reels to the gale, turns over to the very edge of destruction,
+and then rights itself with half its crew swept overboard—and all this
+while the precise event befell a thousand miles away. Such things,
+which spell a different kind of sensitiveness from that with which we
+are familiar, have happened to people well known to me; but as they
+have happened to others also, and as almost every town or village has a
+convincing example of its own, I forbear details and accept the fact,
+and try here to view or understand it as a natural phenomenon.
+
+At first you may strongly object even to my premise, calling it
+incredible that sense-bound mortals should feel a danger that their
+eyes cannot see or their ears hear; but there are at least two
+reasonable answers to your objection. In the first place, we are
+sense-bound only in the sense of limiting ourselves unnecessarily,
+confining our perception to five habitual modes, shamefully neglecting
+to cultivate even these, and ignoring the use or the existence of other
+and perhaps finer means of contact with the external world. Again, it
+is not a whit more incredible that sensitive creatures, whether brute
+or human, should feel the coming or going of a person than that they
+should feel his look or glance, as they certainly do.
+
+This last is no cloudy theory; it is a plain fact which endures the
+test of observation. Almost any man of strong personality can disturb
+or awaken a sleeping wild animal simply by looking at him intently; and
+the nearer the man is the more certain the effect of his gaze on the
+sleeping brute. The same is true in less degree of most Indians and
+woodsmen, and of many sensitive women and children, as you may prove
+for yourself. Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person
+is taking a nap—not sleeping heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly,
+naturally, as all wild animals take their rest. Make no noise, but
+stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the sleeper’s
+face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the
+head or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he
+feels your look and is trying subconsciously to avoid it. The
+awakening, whether of animals or of men, does not always follow our
+look, most fortunately, but it happens frequently enough under varying
+conditions to put the explanation of chance entirely out of the
+question.
+
+When I was a child I used to sit long hours in the woods alone, partly
+for love of the breathing solitude, and partly for getting acquainted
+with wild birds or beasts, which showed no fear of me when they found
+me quiet. At such times I often found within myself an impression which
+I expressed in the words, “Something is watching you.” Again and again,
+when nothing stirred in my sight, that curious warning would come; and
+almost invariably, on looking around, I would find some bird or fox or
+squirrel which had probably caught a slight motion of my head and had
+halted his roaming to creep near and watch me inquisitively. As I grew
+older the “feel” of living things grew dimmer; yet many times in later
+years, when I have been in the wilderness alone, I have experienced the
+same impression of being watched or followed, and so often has it
+proved a true warning that I still trust it and act upon it, even when
+my eyes see nothing unusual and my ears hear nothing but their own
+ringing in the silence.
+
+I remember once, when I was sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight,
+that I began to have an increasing impression that some living thing
+unseen was near me. At first I neglected it, for I had my eyes on a
+deer that interested me greatly; but the feeling grew stronger till I
+obeyed it and rose to my feet. At the first motion came a startling
+woof! and from some bushes close behind me a bear jumped away for the
+woods. No doubt he had been there some time, watching me or creeping
+nearer, knowing that I was alive, but completely puzzled by my
+shapelessness and lack of action. A similar thing has happened several
+times, in other places and with other animals, and always at a moment
+when I was most in harmony with the environment and a sharer of its
+deep tranquillity. [1]
+
+As a child this faculty (if such it be) was as natural as anything else
+in life; for in childhood we take the world as we find it in personal
+experience, and nothing is especially wonderful where all is wonder. I
+then thought no more of feeling the presence of an animal than of
+hearing him walk when I could not see him; but as I grew older the
+experience seemed a little odd or “queer,” and I never spoke of it to
+any one till I discovered, first, that the faculty seems to be common
+among animals, and second, that some Indians (not all) have it and
+regard it as the most natural thing in the world. Here is how the
+latter discovery came about:
+
+Simmo and I were calling moose from a lake one moonlit night, with a
+silent canoe under us, dark evergreen woods at our back, and a little
+ghost of a beaver-meadow, vague, misty, shadow-filled, immediately
+before our eyes yet seeming as remote as any drifting cloud. To our
+repeated call no answer was returned; then we allowed the canoe to
+drift ashore where it would, and sat listening to the vast silence. I
+was brought back from my absorption in the fragrance, the harmony, the
+infinite stillness of the night by feeling the canoe shake and hearing
+Simmo whisper, “Somet’ing near. Look out!”
+
+Now in a silence like that, the tense, living silence of the wilderness
+at night, one’s ears are as full of tricks as a puckwudgie, who is one
+of the mischievous fairy-folk of the Indians. The whine of a mosquito
+sounds across the whole lake; or the mutter of a frog becomes like the
+roar of a bull of Bashan; or suddenly you begin to hear music as the
+faint vibration of some dry stub, purring in the unfelt air currents,
+turns to the booming of a mighty church organ. At such a time, unless
+one has trained his senses to ignore the obvious (the Indian secret of
+seeing and hearing things), one soon becomes confused, uncertain of the
+borderland between the real and the imaginary; so presently I turned to
+Simmo and whispered, “You hear him?”
+
+The Indian shook his head. “No hear-um; just feel-um,” he said; and
+again we settled down to watch. For several minutes we questioned the
+woods, the lake, the meadow; but nothing stirred, not a sound broke the
+painful quiet, the while we both felt strongly that some living thing
+was near us. Then a shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned
+root, only a few yards away, and a great bull stood alert on the open
+shore.
+
+I thought then, and I still think, that besides our ordinary five
+senses we have a finer faculty which I must call, for lack of a better
+term, the sense of presence; and I explain it on the assumption that
+every life recognizes and attracts every other life by some occult
+force, as dead matter (if there be such a thing) attracts all other
+matter by the mysterious force of gravitation.
+
+Doubtless I have been many times watched in the woods when I did not
+know or feel it; and certainly I have often had my eyes upon an
+unconscious bird or beast when, though I fancied he grew uneasy under
+my scrutiny, he did not have enough sense of danger to run
+away—possibly because no real danger threatened him, the eyes that
+looked upon him being friendly or merely curious.
+
+Once on a hardwood ridge I came upon a buck lying asleep in open
+timber, and stood with my back against a great sugar-maple, observing
+him for five or six minutes before he stirred. No, I was not trying to
+awaken him by a look, or to stage any other experiment. I was simply
+enjoying a rare sight, noting with immense interest that this wild
+creature, whom I had always seen so splendidly alert, could nod and
+blink like any ordinary mortal. So near was he that I could mark the
+drowsiness of his eyes, the position of his feet, the swelling of his
+sides as he breathed. I happened to be counting his respirations in
+friendly fashion, comparing them with my own, when suddenly his head
+turned to me; his eyes snapped wide open, and they were looking
+straight into mine. Apparently his feeling or subconscious perception
+had warned him where danger was; but still his eyes could not recognize
+it, standing there in plain sight. For to stand motionless without
+concealment is often the best way to deceive a wild animal, which
+habitually associates life with motion.
+
+No more drowsiness for that buck! He was startled, plainly enough; but
+he rose to his feet very stealthily, not stirring a leaf, and stood at
+tense attention. When he turned his head to look over his shoulder
+behind him I raised my field-glass, for I wanted to read his thought,
+if possible, in his eyes. As he turned his gaze my way again his nose
+seemed to sweep my face. It rested there a moment full on the lens of
+my glass, moved on, and returned for a longer inspection. Then he
+glided past, still without recognizing me, testing the air at every
+springy step, harking this way, looking that way, and disappearing at
+last as if he trod on eggs.
+
+From such experiences I judge that the feeling of unsensed danger, or
+the more subtle feel of a living thing, is as variable in the animals
+as are their instincts or their social habits. It may be dull in one
+creature and keen in another of the same species, or alternately awake
+and asleep in the same creature; but there is no longer any doubt in my
+mind that it is a widespread gift among birds and beasts. When it
+appears occasionally among men, therefore, it is to be regarded not as
+uncanny or queer, but, like the sure sense of direction which a few men
+possess, as a precious and perfectly natural inheritance from our
+primitive ancestors. That it skips a dozen generations to alight on an
+odd man here or there, like a storm-driven bird on a ship at sea, is
+precisely what we might expect of heredity, which follows a course that
+seems to us erratic or at times marvelous, as geometry appears to an
+Eskimo, because we do not yet understand its law or working principle.
+
+Among savage tribes, who live a natural outdoor life in close contact
+with nature, the perception of danger or of persons beyond the ordinary
+sense range is much more common than among civilized folk. Almost every
+explorer and missionary who has spent much time with African natives,
+for example, has noticed that the Blacks have some mysterious means of
+knowing when a stranger is approaching one of their
+villages—mysterious, that is, because it does not depend on runners or
+messengers or any other of our habitual means of communication. A
+recent observer of these people has at last offered an explanation of
+the matter, with many other impressions of native philosophy, in a work
+to which he gives the suggestive title of Thinking Black. Of the scores
+of books on Africa which I have read, this is the only one to show more
+than a very superficial knowledge of the natives, and the reason is
+apparent. The author thinks, most reasonably, that you cannot possibly
+know the native or understand his customs until you know his thought,
+and that the only trail to his thought is through the language in which
+the thought is expressed. Therefore did he study the speech as a means
+of knowing the man; and herein he is in refreshing contrast to other
+African travelers and hunters I have read, who spend a few months or
+weeks in a white man’s camp, knowing the natives about as intimately as
+lovers know the moon, and then babble of native customs or beliefs or
+“superstitions,”—as if any rite or habit could be understood without
+first understanding the philosophy of life from which it sprang, as a
+flower from a hidden seed.
+
+This rare observer, who knows how the native thinks because he
+perfectly understands the native language, tells us [2] that the Blacks
+clearly recognize the power of animals and of normal men to know many
+things beyond their sense range; that they give it a definite name, and
+explain it in a way which indicates an astonishing degree of abstract
+thought on the part of those whom we ignorantly call unthinking
+savages. According to these natives, every natural animal, man
+included, has the physical gifts of touch, sight, hearing, taste,
+smell, and chumfo. I must still use the native term because it cannot
+be translated, because it implies all that we mean by instinct,
+intuitive or absolute knowledge and (a thing which no other psychology
+has even hinted at) the process by which such knowledge is acquired.
+
+This chumfo is not a sixth or extra sense, as we assume, but rather the
+unity or perfect co-ordination of the five senses at their highest
+point. I may illustrate the matter this way, still following Crawford,
+whose record contains many curious bits of observation, savage
+philosophy, woods lore and animal lore, many of them written by the
+camp-fire and all jumbled together pell-mell:
+
+For ordinary perception at near distances the eye or the ear is
+sufficient, and while engaged in any near or obvious matter the five
+senses work independently, each busy with its own function. But when
+such observation is ended or at fault, and the man retreats, as it
+were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge and
+harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. (Here, in
+native dress, is nothing more or less than the psychologist’s
+subconscious self, with its mysterious working.) At such moments the
+whole animal or the whole man, not his brain and senses alone, becomes
+sensitive to the most delicate impressions, to inaudible sounds or
+vibrations, to unseen colors, to unsmelled odors or intangible
+qualities,—to a multitude of subtle messages from the external world,
+which are ordinarily unnoticed because the senses are ordinarily
+separate, each occupied with its particular message. So when a sleeping
+animal is suddenly aware that he must be alert, he does not learn of
+approaching danger through his ears or nose, but through chumfo,
+through the perfect co-ordination of all his senses working together as
+one. In the same way a wandering black man always knows where his hut
+or camp is; he holds his course on the darkest night, finds his way
+through a vast jungle, goes back to any spot in it where he left
+something, and often astonishes African travelers by getting wind of
+their doings while they are yet far distant.
+
+Such is the native philosophy; and the striking feature of it is, that
+it is not superstitious but keenly observant, not ignorant but rational
+and scientific, since it seems to anticipate our latest biological
+discoveries, or rather, as we shall see, a philosophy which rests upon
+biological science as a foundation.
+
+Perhaps the first suggestion that the native may have reason in his
+theory comes from the extraordinary sensitiveness of certain blind
+people, who walk confidently about a cluttered room, or who sort the
+family linen after it returns from the laundry. These blind people say,
+and think, that they avoid objects by feeling the increasing air
+pressure as they approach, or that they sort the family linen by smell;
+but it appears more likely that a greater unity and refinement of all
+their senses results from their living in darkness.
+
+That our human senses have unused possibilities, or that we may
+possibly possess extra senses of which we are not conscious, may appear
+if you study the phenomenon of hearing, especially if you study it when
+you hear a strange sound in the woods or in the house at night. It is
+assumed that we always locate a sound by the ear, and that we determine
+its volume or distance by our judgment from previous experiences; but
+that, I think, is a secondary and not a primary process. When we act
+most naturally we seem to locate a sound not by search or experiment,
+but instantly, instinctively, absolutely; and then by our ear or our
+judgment we strive to verify our first chumfo impression.
+
+As a specific instance, you are lying half asleep at night when a
+faint, strange sound breaks in upon your consciousness. If you act
+naturally now, you will nine times out of ten locate the sound on the
+instant, without bringing your “good ear” to bear upon it; but if you
+neglect or lose your first impression, you may hunt for an hour and go
+back to bed without finding the source of the disturbance. Or you are
+traveling along a lonely lane at night, more alive than you commonly
+are, when a sudden cry breaks out of the darkness. It lasts but a
+fraction of a second and is gone; yet in that fleeting instant you have
+learned three things: you know the direction of the cry; you know,
+though you never heard it before, whether it is a loud cry from a
+distance or a faint cry from near at hand; and you are so sure of its
+exact location that you go to a certain spot, whether near or far, and
+say, “That cry sounded here.”
+
+So much if you act naturally; but if you depend on your ears or
+judgment, as men are apt to do, then you are in for a long chase before
+you locate the cry of a bird or a beast or a lost child in the night.
+
+It is easy to make mistakes here, for we are so cumbered by artificial
+habits that it is difficult to follow any purely natural process; but
+our trail becomes clearer when we study the matter of hearing among the
+brutes. Thus, your dog is lying asleep by the fire when a faint noise
+or footstep sounds outside. Sometimes, indeed, there is no audible
+sound at all when he springs to his feet; but no sooner is the door
+opened for him than he is around the house and away, heading as
+straight for the disturbance as if he knew, as he probably does,
+exactly where to find it. Yet your dog is, I repeat, a very dull
+creature in comparison with his wild kindred. Their ability to locate a
+sound is almost unbelievable, not because they have more delicate ears
+(for the human ear is much finer, being sensitive to a thousand
+inflections, tones, harmonies, which are meaningless to the brute), but
+because of what the Blacks call their better chumfo or what we
+thoughtlessly call their stronger instincts.
+
+This has been strongly impressed upon me at times when I have tried to
+call a moose in the wilderness. If you seek these animals far back
+where they are never hunted—a difficult matter nowadays—the bulls
+answer readily enough, or sometimes too readily, as when one big brute
+chased me to my canoe and gave me a hatless run for it; but in a
+much-hunted region they are very shy and come warily to a call. The
+best way to see them in such a place is to call a few times at night,
+or until you get an answer, and then go quickly away before the bull
+comes near enough to begin circling suspiciously. At daybreak you are
+very apt to find him waiting; and the astonishing thing is that he is
+waiting at the very spot where you used your trumpet.
+
+The place you select for calling may be a tiny bog in a vast forest, or
+a little, nameless beaver-meadow by a lake or river. It is like many
+other such places, near or far, and the bull may come from a distance,
+crossing lakes, rivers, bogs and dense forest on his way; but he never
+seems to make a mistake or to be at a loss in locating the call. On a
+still night I have heard a bull answer me from a mountain five or six
+miles away; yet in the morning there he was, waiting expectantly for
+his mate near the bit of open shore where I had called him; and to
+reach that spot he must either have crossed the lake by swimming, a
+distance of two miles, or else have circled it on a wide détour. That
+he should come such a distance through woods and waters, and pick the
+right spot from a hundred others on either side, seems to me not a
+matter of ears or experience but of chumfo, or absolute knowledge.
+
+Another and more interesting verification of the chumfo philosophy is
+open to any man who will go quietly through the big woods by moonlight,
+putting himself back amid primal or animal conditions, and observing
+himself closely as he does so. The man who has not traveled the
+wilderness alone at night has a vivid and illuminating experience
+awaiting him. He is amazed, so soon as he overcomes the first unnatural
+feeling of fear, to find how alive he is, and how much better he can
+hear and smell than ever he dreamed. At such a time one’s whole body
+seems to become a delicately poised instrument for receiving sense
+impressions, and one’s skin especially begins to tingle and creep as it
+wakes from its long sleep. Nor is this “creeping” of the skin strange
+or queer, as we assume, but perfectly natural. The sensations which we
+now ignorantly associate with fear of the dark (a late and purely human
+development; the animal knows it not) are in reality the sensations of
+awakening life.
+
+Possibly we may explain this supersensitiveness of the skin, when life
+awakens in it once more and it becomes for us another and finer
+instrument of perception, by the simple biological fact that every cell
+of the multitudes which make up the human body has a more or less
+complete organization within itself. Moreover, as late experiments have
+shown, a cell or a tissue of cells will live and prosper in a suitable
+environment when completely separated from the body of which it was
+once a part. These human cells inherit certain characteristics common
+to all animal cells since life began; and it is not improbable that
+they inherit also something of the primal cell’s sensibility, or
+capacity to receive impressions from the external world. This universal
+cell-function was largely given over when the animal (a collection of
+cells) began to develop special organs of touch, sight, and hearing;
+but there is no indication that the original power of sensibility has
+ever been wholly destroyed in any cell. It is, therefore, still within
+the range of biological possibility that a man should hear with his
+fingers or smell with his toes, since every cell of both finger and toe
+once did a work corresponding to the present functions of the five
+animal senses.
+
+Before you dismiss this as an idle or impossible theory, try a simple
+experiment, which may open your eyes to the reality of living things.
+Go to a greenhouse and select a spot of bare earth under a growing
+rose-bush. Examine the surface carefully, then brush and examine it
+again, to be sure that not a root of any kind is present. Now place a
+handful of good plant-food on the selected spot, and go away to your
+own affairs. Return in a week or so, brush aside your “bait,” and there
+before your eyes is a mass of white feeding-roots where no root was
+before. In some way, deep under the soil, the hungry cells have heard
+or smelled or felt a rumor of food, and have headed for it as surely as
+a dog follows his nose to his dinner.
+
+Do plants, then, know what they do when they turn to the light, and is
+there something like consciousness in a tree or a blade of grass? That
+is too much to assert, though one may think or believe so. No man can
+answer the question which occurs so constantly to one who lives among
+growing things; but you can hardly leave your simple experiment without
+formulating a theory that even the hidden rootlets of a rose-bush have
+something fundamentally akin to our highly developed sensibility. At
+present some biologists are beginning to assert, and confidently,
+though it is but an opinion, that there is no dead matter in the world;
+that the ultimate particles of which matter is composed are all
+intensely alive. And if alive, they must be sentient; that is, each
+must have an infinitesimal degree of feeling or sense perception.
+
+
+
+To return from our speculation, and to illustrate the chumfo faculty
+from human and animal experience: I was once sitting idly on a
+Nantucket wharf, alternately watching some hermit-crabs scurrying about
+in their erratic fashion under the tide, and an old dog that lay
+soaking himself in the warm sunshine. Just behind us, the only
+inharmonious creatures in the peaceful scene, some laborers were
+unloading rocks from a barge by the aid of a derrick. For more than an
+hour, or ever since I came to the wharf, the dog lay in the same spot,
+and in all that time I did not see him move a muscle. He was apparently
+sound asleep. Suddenly he heaved up on his rheumatic legs, sniffed the
+air alertly, and turned his head this way, that way, as if wary of
+something.
+
+The human labor had proceeded lazily, for the day was warm; there was
+no change in the environment, so far as I could discern; the only
+sounds in the air were the sleepy lap of wavelets and the creaking of
+pulleys; yet my instant thought was, “That dog is frightened; but at
+what?” After a few moments of watching he moved off a dozen yards and
+threw himself flat on his side to sleep again. His body was hardly
+relaxed when a guy-rope parted, and the iron-bound mast of the derrick
+crashed down on the wharf.
+
+It was certainly “touch and go” for me; I felt the wind of the thing as
+it fell, and was almost knocked off the wharf; but I was not thinking
+then of my own close call. With my interest at high pitch I examined
+the mast, and found it lying squarely athwart the impression left by
+the dog in the dust of the road.
+
+“Merely a coincidence,” you say; which indicates that we are apt to
+think alike and in set formulas. That is precisely what I said at the
+time—a mere coincidence, but a startling one, which made me think of
+luck (a most foolish notion) and wonder why luck should elect to light
+on a worthless old dog and take no heed of what seemed to me then a
+precious young man. But I have since changed my mind; and here is one
+of the many observations which made me change it.
+
+Years afterward my Indian guide, Simmo, was camped with a white man
+beside a salmon river. It was a rough night, and a storm was roaring
+over the big woods. For shelter they had built a bark commoosie, and
+for comfort a fire of birch logs. At about nine o’clock they turned in,
+each wrapped in his blanket, and slept soundly but lightly, as woodsmen
+do, after a long day on the trail. Some time later—hours, probably, for
+the fire was low, the storm hushed, the world intensely still—the white
+man was awakened by a touch, and opened his eyes to find his companion
+in a tense, listening attitude.
+
+“Bes’ get out of here quick, ’fore somet’ing come,” said the Indian,
+and threw off his blanket.
+
+“But why—what—how do you know?” queried the white man, startled but
+doubting, for he had listened and heard nothing.
+
+The Indian, angered as an Indian of the woods always is when you
+question or challenge his craft, made an impatient gesture. “Don’ know
+how; don’ know why; just know. Come!” he called sharply, and the white
+man followed him away from the camp toward the river, where it was
+lighter. For several minutes they stood there, like two alert animals,
+searching the dark woods with all their senses; but nothing moved. The
+white man was beginning another fool question when there came a sudden
+dull crack, a booming of air, as a huge yellow-birch stub toppled over
+the fire and flattened the commoosie like a bubble.
+
+“Dere! Das de feller mus’ be comin’,” said Simmo. “By cosh, now, nex’
+time Injun tell you one t’ing, p’r’aps you believe-um!” And, as if it
+were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped over
+death-and-destruction, kicked aside some rubbish, and lay down to sleep
+where he was before.
+
+“How do I explain it?” I don’t. I simply recognize a fact which I
+cannot explain, and which I will not blink by calling it another
+coincidence. For the fact is, as I judge, that a few men and many
+animals exercise some extra faculty which I do not or cannot exercise,
+or have access to some source of information which is closed to me.
+When I question the gifted men or women who possess this faculty, or
+what’s-its-name, I find that they are as much in the dark about it as I
+am. They know certain things without knowing how they learn; and the
+only word of explanation they offer is that they “feel” thus and
+so—perhaps as a horse feels when he is holding the right direction
+through a blinding snowstorm, as he does hold it, steadily, surely, if
+you are wise enough not to bother him with the reins or your opinions.
+
+Simmo is one of these rare men. At one moment he is a mere child, so
+guileless, so natural, so innocent of worldly wisdom, that he is
+forever surprising you. Once when his pipe was lost I saw him fill an
+imaginary bowl, scratch an imaginary match, and puff away with a look
+of heavenly content on his weathered face. So you treat him as an
+unspoiled creature, humoring him, till there is difficulty or danger
+ahead, or a man’s work to be done, when he steps quietly to the front
+as if he belonged there. Or you may be talking with him by the
+camp-fire, elaborating some wise theory, when he brushes aside your
+book knowledge as of no consequence and suddenly becomes a philosopher,
+proclaiming a new or startling doctrine of life in the sublimely
+unhampered way of Emerson, who finished off objectors by saying, “I do
+not argue; I know.” But where Emerson gives you a mystical word or a
+bare assertion which he cannot possibly prove, Simmo has a
+disconcerting way of establishing a challenged doctrine by a concrete
+and undeniable fact.
+
+One misty day when we were astray in the wilderness, he and I, we
+attempted to travel by getting our compass bearings from the topmost
+twigs of the evergreens, which slant mostly in one direction. After
+blundering around for a time without getting any nearer camp or
+familiar landmarks, Simmo remarked: “Dese twigs lie like devil. I guess
+I bes’ find-um way myself.” And he did find it, and hold it even after
+darkness fell, by instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have
+been a matter of feeling rather than of sense or observation, for his
+only explanation was, “Oh, w’en I goin’ right I feel good; but w’en I
+goin’ wrong I oneasy.”
+
+This natural feeling or impression of things beyond the range of sight,
+this extra sense, or chumfo unity of all the senses, is probably akin
+to another feeling by which the animal or man becomes aware of distant
+persons, or of distant moods or emotions. The sleeping dog’s alarm
+beneath the weakened derrick, or the sleeping Indian’s uneasiness near
+the doomed birch-stub, might be explained on purely physical grounds:
+some tremor of parting fibers, some warning vibration too faint for
+eardrums but heavy enough to shake a more delicately poised nerve
+center, reached the inner beast or the inner man and roused him to
+impending danger. (There is a deal of babble in this explanation, I
+admit, and still a mystery at the end of it.) But when a man or a brute
+receives knowledge not of matter, but of minds or spirits like his own;
+when a mother knows, for example, the mental state of a son who is far
+away, and when no material vibrations of any known medium can pass
+between them,—then all sixth-sense theories, which must rest on the
+impinging of waves upon nerve centers, no longer satisfy or explain. We
+are in the more shadowy region of thought transference or impulse
+transference, and it is in this silent, unexplored region that, as I
+now believe, a large part of animal communication goes on continually.
+
+That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps more reasonable, if you
+follow this unblazed trail a little farther.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+NATURAL TELEPATHY
+
+
+The way of animal communication now grows dimmer and dimmer, or some
+readers may even think it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of
+Wonderland said when she found herself lengthening out like a
+telescope. But there is certainly a trail of some kind ahead, and since
+we are apt to lose it or to wander apart, let us agree, if we can, upon
+some familiar fact or experience which may serve as a guiding landmark.
+Our general course will be as follows: first, to define our subject, or
+rather, to make its meaning clear by illustration; second, to examine
+the reasonableness of telepathy from a natural or biological viewpoint;
+and finally, to go afield with eyes and minds open to see what the
+birds or the beasts may teach us of this interesting matter.
+
+It seems to be fairly well established that a few men and women of
+uncommonly fine nervous organization (which means an uncommonly natural
+or healthy organization) have the power of influencing the mind of
+another person at a distance; and this rare power goes by the name of
+thought transference, or telepathy. The so-called crossing of letters,
+when two widely separated persons sit down at the same hour to write
+each other on the same subject, is the most familiar but not the most
+convincing example of the thing. Yes, I know the power and the example
+are both challenged, since there are scientists who deny telepathy root
+and branch, as well as scientists who believe in it implicitly; but I
+also know something more convincing than any second-hand denial or
+belief, having at different times met three persons who used the “gift”
+so freely, and for the most part so surely, that to ignore it would be
+to abandon confidence in my own sense and judgment. I am not trying,
+therefore, to investigate an opinion, but to understand a fact.
+
+To illustrate the matter by a personal experience: For many years after
+I first left home my mother would become “uneasy in her mind,” as she
+expressed it, whenever a slight accident or danger or sickness had
+befallen me. If the event were to me serious or threatening, there was
+no more doubt or uneasiness on my mother’s part. She would know within
+the hour that I was in trouble of some kind, and would write or
+telegraph to ask what was the matter.
+
+It is commonly assumed that any such power must be a little weird or
+uncanny; that it contradicts the wholesome experience of humanity or
+makes fantastic addition to its natural faculties; and I confess that
+the general queerness, the lack of balance, the Hottentotish credulity
+of folk who dabble in occult matters give some human, if not
+reasonable, grounds for the assumption. Nevertheless, I judge that
+telepathy is of itself wholly natural; that it is a survival, an
+age-old inheritance rather than a new invention or discovery; that it
+might be exercised not by a few astonishing individuals, but by any
+normal man or woman who should from infancy cultivate certain mental
+powers which we now habitually neglect. I am led to this conviction
+because I have found something that very much resembles telepathy in
+frequent use throughout the entire animal kingdom. It is, as I think
+and shall try to make clear, a natural gift or faculty of the animal
+mind, which is largely subconscious, and it is from the animal mind
+that we inherit it; just as a few woodsmen inherit the animal sense of
+direction, and cultivate and trust it till they are sure of their way
+in any wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled by
+artificial habit, go promptly astray whenever they venture beyond
+beaten trails.
+
+That the animals inherit this power of silent communication over great
+distances is occasionally manifest even among our half-natural domestic
+creatures. For example, that same old setter of mine, Don, who
+introduced us to our fascinating subject, was left behind most
+unwillingly during my terms at school; but he always seemed to know
+when I was on my way home. For months at a stretch he would stay about
+the house, obeying my mother perfectly, though she never liked a dog;
+but on the day I was expected he would leave the premises, paying no
+heed to orders, and go to a commanding ledge beside the lane, where he
+could overlook the highroad. Whatever the hour of my coming, whether
+noon or midnight, there I would find him waiting.
+
+Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly, having sent no word of my
+coming, my mother missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours later,
+when he did not return at his dinner-time or answer her repeated call,
+she searched for him and found him camped expectantly in the lane.
+“Oho! wise dog,” said she. “I understand now. Your master is coming
+home.” And without a doubt that it would soon be needed, she went and
+made my room ready.
+
+If the dog had been accustomed to spend his loafing-time in the lane,
+one might thoughtlessly account for his action by the accident or
+hit-or-miss theory; but he was never seen to wait there for any length
+of time except on the days when I was expected. And once (unhappily the
+last time Don ever came to meet his master) he was observed to take up
+his watch within a few minutes of the hour when my train left the
+distant town. Apparently he knew when I headed homeward, but there was
+nothing in his instinct or experience to tell him how long the journey
+might be. So he would wait patiently, loyally, knowing I was coming,
+and my mother would take his dinner out to him.
+
+In many other ways Don gave the impression, if not the evidence, that
+he was a “mind-reader.” He always knew when Saturday came, or a
+holiday, and possibly he may have associated the holiday notion with my
+old clothes; but how he knew what luck the day had in store for him, as
+he often seemed to know the instant I unsnapped his chain in the early
+morning, was a matter that at first greatly puzzled me. If I appeared
+in my old clothes and set him free with the resolution that my day must
+be spent in study or tinkering or farm work, he would bid me good
+morning and go off soberly to explore the premises, as dogs are wont to
+do. But when I met him silently with the notion that the day was my day
+off, to be wasted in shooting or fishing or roving the countryside,
+then in some way Don caught the notion instantly; he would be tugging
+at his leash before I reached him, and no sooner was he free than he
+was all over the yard in mad capers or making lunatic attempts to drag
+me off on our common holiday before breakfast.
+
+That any dog of mine should obey my word, doing gladly whatever I told
+him, was to be expected; or that in the field he should watch for a
+motion of my hand and follow it instantly, whether to charge or hold or
+come in or cast left or right, was a simple matter of training; but
+that this particular dog should, unknown to me, enter into my very
+feeling, was certainly not the result of education, and probably not of
+sight or sense, as we ordinarily understand the terms. When we were
+together of an evening before the fire, so long as I was working or
+pleasantly reading he would lie curled up on his own mat, without ever
+disturbing me till it was time for him to be put to bed, when he would
+remind me of the fact by nudging my elbow. But if an hour came when I
+was in perplexity, or had heard bad news and was brooding over it,
+hardly would I be away in thought, forgetful of Don’s existence on a
+trail I must follow alone, when his silky head would slide under my
+hand, and I would find his brown eyes searching my face with something
+inexpressibly fine and loyal and wistful in their questioning deeps.
+
+Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to enter into my moods by
+some subtle, mysterious perception for which I have no name, and no
+explanation save the obvious one—that a man’s will or emotion may fill
+a room with waves or vibration as real as those streaming from a fire
+or a lighted candle, and that normal animals have some unused bodily
+faculty for receiving precisely such messages or vibrations. But we are
+not yet quite ready for that part of our trail; it will come later,
+when we can follow it with more understanding.
+
+Should this record seem to you too personal (I am dealing only with
+first-hand impressions of animal life), here is the story of another
+dog—not a blue-blooded or highly trained setter, but just an ordinary,
+doggy, neglected kind of dog—submitted by a scientific friend of mine,
+who very cautiously offers no explanation, but is content to observe
+and verify the facts:
+
+This second dog, Watch by name and nature, was accustomed to meet his
+master much as Don met me in the lane; but he did it much more
+frequently, and timed the meeting more accurately. He was nearer the
+natural animal, never having been trained in any way, and perhaps for
+that reason he retained more of the natural gift or faculty of
+receiving a message from a distance. His owner, a busy carpenter and
+builder, had an office in town, and was accustomed to return from his
+office or work at all hours, sometimes early in the afternoon, and
+again long after dark. At whatever hour the man turned homeward, Watch
+seemed to follow his movement as if by sight; he would grow uneasy,
+would bark to be let out if he happened to be in the house, and would
+trot off to meet his master about half-way. Though he was occasionally
+at fault, and sometimes returned to brood over the matter when his
+master, having started for home, was turned aside by some errand, his
+mistakes were decidedly exceptional rather than typical. His strange
+“gift” was a matter of common knowledge in the neighborhood, and
+occasionally a doubtful man would stage an experiment: the master would
+agree to mark the hour when he turned homeward, and one or more
+interested persons would keep tabs on the dog. So my scientific friend
+repeatedly tested Watch, and observed him to take the road within a few
+moments of the time when his master left his office or building
+operations in the town, some three or four miles away.
+
+Thus far the record is clear and straight, but there is one important
+matter which my friend overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when
+they deal with nature, their mistake being to regard animals as
+featureless members of a class or species rather than as individuals.
+The dog’s master always came or went in a wagon drawn by a quiet old
+horse, and upon inquiry I found that between Watch and the horse was a
+bond of comradeship, such as often exists between two domestic animals
+of different species. Thus, the dog often preferred to sleep in the
+stall near his big chum, or would accompany him to the pasture when he
+was turned loose, and would always stand by, as if overlooking the
+operation, when the horse was being harnessed. It may well be,
+therefore, that it was from the horse rather than from the man that
+Watch received notice when heads were turned homeward; but of the fact
+that some kind of telepathic communication passed between two members
+of the trio there is no reasonable doubt.
+
+Some of my readers may make objection at this point that, though
+something like telepathic communication appears now and then among the
+brutes, it should be regarded as merely freakish or sensational, like a
+two-headed calf; while others will surely ask, “Why, if our dogs
+possess such a convenient faculty, do they not use it more frequently,
+more obviously, and so spare themselves manifold discomforts or
+misunderstandings?”
+
+Such an objection is natural enough, since we judge as we live, mostly
+by habit; but it has no validity, I think, and for two reasons. First,
+because such animals as we have thus far seen exercising the faculty
+(and they are but a few out of many) are apparently normal and sensible
+beasts, precisely like their less-gifted fellows; and second, because
+the telepathic power itself, when one examines it without prejudice,
+appears to be wholly natural, and sane or simple as the power of
+thought, even of such rudimentary thought as may be exercised in an
+animal’s head. As for emotions, more intense and penetrating than any
+thought, it is hardly to be questioned that a man’s fear or panic may
+flow through his knees into the horse he is riding, or that emotional
+excitement may spread through a crowd of men without visible or audible
+expression. That a dog should receive a wordless message or impulse
+from his master at a distance of three or four miles is, fundamentally,
+no more unnatural than that one man should feel another’s mood at a
+distance of three or four feet. Whether we can explain the phenomenon
+on strictly biological or scientific grounds is another matter.
+
+I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go cat-footedly when I
+enter that strange garret. I look with wonder on these patient,
+unemotional men who care nothing for a bear or an eagle, but who creep
+lower and ever lower in the scale of living things, searching with
+penetrating looks among infinitesimal microbes for the secret that
+shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us what life is. And
+because man is everywhere the same, watching these exploring biologists
+I remember the curious theology of certain South-Pacific savages, who
+say that God made all things, the stars and the world and the living
+man; but we cannot see Him because He is so very small, because a
+dancing mote or a grain of sand is for Him a roomy palace. Yet even
+with a modest little knowledge of biology we may find a viewpoint, I
+think, from which telepathy or thought-transference would appear as
+natural, as inevitable, as the forthgoing of light from a burning lamp.
+
+Thus, historically there was a time when the living cell, or the
+cell-of-life, as one biologist calls it with rare distinction, was
+sensitive only to pressure; when in its darkness it knew of an external
+world only by its own tremblings, in response to vibrations which
+poured over it from every side. Something made it tremble, and that
+“something” had motion or life like its own. Such, imaginatively, was
+the sentient cell’s first knowledge, the result of a sense of touch
+distributed throughout its protecting surface.
+
+Long afterward came a time when the living cell, multiplied now a
+millionfold, began to develop special sense-organs, each a modification
+of its rudimentary sense of touch; one to receive vibrations of air,
+for hearing; another to catch some of the thronging ether waves, for
+seeing; a third to register the floating particles of matter on a
+sensitive membrane, for taste or smelling. By that time the cell had
+learned beyond a peradventure that the universe outside itself had
+light and color and fragrance and harmony. Finally came a day when the
+cell, still multiplying and growing ever more complex, became conscious
+of a new power within itself, most marvelous of all the powers of
+earth, the power to think, to feel, and to be aware of a self that
+registered its own impressions of the external world. And then the cell
+knew, as surely as it knew sound or light, that the universe held
+consciousness also, and some infinite source of thought and feeling.
+Such, apparently, was the age-long process from the sentient cell to
+the living man.
+
+Since we are following a different trail, this is hardly the time or
+place to face the question how this development from mere living to
+conscious life took place, even if one were wise or rash enough to
+grapple with the final problem of evolution. Yet it may not be amiss
+while we “rest a pipe,” as the voyageurs say, to point out that, of the
+two possible answers to our question (aside from the convenient and
+restful answer that God made things so), only one, curiously enough,
+has thus far been considered by our physical scientists. The thousand
+books and theories of evolution which one reads are all reducible to
+this elementary proposition: that the simple things of life became
+complex by inner necessity. In other words, an eye became an eye, or an
+oak an oak, or a man a man, simply because each must develop according
+to the inner law of its being.
+
+That may be true, though the all-compelling “inner law” is still only a
+vague assumption, and the mystery of its origin is untouched; but why
+not by outer compulsion as reasonably as by inner necessity? A
+cell-of-life that was constantly bombarded by moving particles of
+matter might be compelled to develop a sense of touch, in order to save
+its precious life by differentiating such particles into good and bad,
+or helpful and harmful. A cell over which vibrations of air and ether
+were continually passing might be forced for its own good to develop an
+ear and an eye to receive such vibrations as sound and light; and a
+cell over which mysterious waves of thought and emotion were
+ceaselessly flowing might be driven to comprehend that particular
+mystery by developing a thought and emotion of its own.
+
+I do not say that this is the right answer; I mention it merely as a
+speculative possibility, in order to get our alleged scientific mind
+out of its deep rut of habit by showing that every road has two sides,
+though a man habitually use only one; and that Reason or Law or God, or
+whatever you choose to call the ultimate mainspring of life, is quite
+as apt to be found on one side of the road as on the other. Inner
+necessity is not a whit more logical or more explanatory than external
+force or compulsion when we face the simple fact that an animal now
+sees and feels in the light instead of merely existing in darkness, or
+that primitive cells which were dimly sentient have now become as
+thinking gods, knowing good and evil.
+
+What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we
+have it and use it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it
+is a living force of some kind; that it projects itself or its waves
+outward, as the sun cannot but send forth his light; that it affects
+men as surely as gravitation or heat or the blow of a hammer affects
+them,—all this is reasonably clear and certain. But how thought
+travels; what refined mental ether conveys it outward with a speed that
+makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison, and with a force that
+sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that the light
+cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep
+that our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an
+answer. Yet if we once grant the simple proposition that thought is a
+force, that it moves inevitably from its source to its object, the
+conclusion is inevitable that any thinking mind should be able to send
+its silent message to any other mind in the universe. There is nothing
+in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude such a possibility;
+only our present habit of speech, of too much speech, prevents us from
+viewing it frankly.
+
+As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when
+telepathy shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among
+enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or evolutionary
+makeshift. But that beckons us away to an imaginative flight among the
+clouds, and on the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow.
+
+The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a
+master’s message at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one
+that I cannot answer. Perhaps the reason is obvious enough to some of
+the dogs, which have a sidelong way of coming home from their roving,
+as if aware they had long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty
+lies not in the dog, but in his master. Every communication has two
+ends, one sending, the other receiving; and of a thousand owners there
+are hardly two who know how properly to handle a dog either by speech
+or by silence. Still again, one assumption implied in the question is
+that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are all alike; and that
+common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ as widely in
+their instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly
+explains why one setter readily follows his master’s word or hand, or
+enters into his mood, while another remains hopelessly dumb or
+unresponsive. The telepathic faculty appears more frequently, as we
+shall see, among birds or animals that habitually live in flocks or
+herds, and I have always witnessed its most striking or impressive
+manifestation between a mother animal and her young, as if some
+prenatal influence or control were still at work.
+
+For example, I have occasionally had the good luck to observe a
+she-wolf leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake in
+winter; and at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after
+any moving object that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks
+away to rush an animal that he sees moving in the woods (once that
+moving animal was myself), the mother heads him instantly if he is
+close to her; but if he is off before she can check him by a motion of
+her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength in chasing
+him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks steadily at
+the running cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look
+recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack. If the moving object
+be proper game afoot, the mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it,
+while the pack follows stealthily behind her on either side; but if the
+distant object be a moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf must
+not meddle with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her way without
+a sound, and the errant cub falls into place as if he had understood
+her silent command.
+
+You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience
+nearer home, if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of
+young foxes. I have spent hours by different dens, and have repeatedly
+witnessed what seemed to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet
+heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible
+communication comes later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves;
+and then you will often hear the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’
+impatient crying when they are separated in the dark woods. While the
+den is their home (they seldom enter it after they once roam abroad)
+silence is the rule, and that silence is most eloquent. For hours at a
+stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some stalking
+imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others challenging their mates to mock
+fights or mock hunting; and the most striking feature of the exercise,
+after you have become familiar with the fascinating little creatures,
+is that the old vixen, who lies apart where she can overlook the play
+and the neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect control at
+every instant, though never a word is uttered.
+
+That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little
+brutes is constantly evident; but it is without voice or language. Now
+and then, when a cub’s capers lead him too far from the den, the vixen
+lifts her head to look at him intently; and somehow that look has the
+same effect as the she-wolf’s silent call; it stops the cub as if she
+had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If that happened once, you
+might overlook it as a matter of mere chance; but it happens again and
+again, and always in the same challenging way. The eager cub suddenly
+checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches the vixen’s
+look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.
+
+As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the
+mother must go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her
+feet. Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all
+upturned to the greater head that bends to them, and there they stand
+in mute intentness, as if the mother were speaking and the cubs
+listening. For a brief interval that tense scene endures, exquisitely
+impressive, while you strain your senses to catch its meaning. There is
+no sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear. Then the cubs
+scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother, without once looking back,
+slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth a foxy little
+face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving
+shadow in the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the
+face draws back, and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.
+
+You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a
+cub will again show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a
+human mother could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave
+the house with the certainty that four or five lively youngsters would
+keep out of danger or mischief as completely as young fox cubs keep out
+of it, raising children might more resemble “one grand sweet song” than
+it does at present.
+
+
+
+So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent
+communication occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or
+strongly social in their habits. The timber-wolves of the North are the
+first examples that occur to me, and also the most puzzling. They are
+wary brutes, so much so that those who have spent a lifetime near them
+will tell you that it is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method;
+that your meeting with him is a matter of chance or rare accident; that
+not only has he marvelously keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a
+nose that cannot be deceived, but he can also “feel” a danger which is
+hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such is the Indian verdict; and
+I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have some sympathy
+with it.
+
+The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely
+cunning; but it is naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that
+wolves, more than most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one
+another, or even from a concealed hunter, who may by his excitement
+send forth some kind of emotional alarm. When you are sitting quietly
+in the woods, and a pack of wolves pass near without noticing their one
+enemy, though he is in plain sight, you think that they are no more
+cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true, so far as their
+cunning depends on what they may see or hear. Once when I was crossing
+a frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves rushed out of the
+nearest cover and came at me on the jump, mistaking me for a deer or
+some other game animal; which does not speak very highly for either
+their eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in
+all Canada when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with
+ready rifle near some venison which the same wolves have killed; when
+you see them break out of the woods upon the ice, running free and
+confident to the food which they know is awaiting them; when you see
+them stop suddenly, as if struck, though they cannot possibly see or
+smell you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to a
+meeting-point on another lake—well, then you may conclude, as I do,
+that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper than his five senses.
+
+Another lupine trait which first surprised and then challenged my
+woodcraft is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run
+in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where
+his mates are hunting or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The
+pack is made up of his family relatives, younger or older, all mothered
+by the same she-wolf; and by some bond or attraction or silent
+communication he can go straight to them at any hour of the day or
+night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and they have
+wandered over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.
+
+We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear
+presently), on the simple ground that the wolves, though incurable
+rovers, have bounds beyond which they seldom pass; that they return on
+their course with more or less regularity; and that in traveling, as
+distinct from hunting, they always follow definite runways, like the
+foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf might remember
+that the pack was due in a certain region on a certain day, and by
+going to that region and putting his nose to the runways he could
+quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows. There is nothing occult
+in such a process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.
+
+Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact,
+since a brute probably acts more intuitively and less rationally; but
+it does not account for the amazing certainty of a wounded wolf when
+separated from his pack. He always does separate, by the way; not
+because the others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature, but
+because every stricken bird or beast seeks instinctively to be alone
+and quiet while his hurt is healing. I have followed with keen interest
+the doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two days and
+nights in a sheltered den, after which he rose from his bed and went
+straight as a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed a buck and left
+plenty of venison behind them.
+
+In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s
+seclusion, because the limping track that led from the den was but a
+few hours old when I found it, and the only track leading into the den
+was half obliterated by snow which had fallen two nights previously.
+How many devious miles the pack had traveled in the interim would be
+hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or roaming trails at widely
+separate points, and once I surprised them in their day-bed; but I
+never found the limit of their great range. A few days later that same
+limping wolf left another den of his, under a windfall, and headed not
+for the buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for another deer which
+the same pack had killed in a different region, some eight or ten
+straight miles away, and perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly
+travel.
+
+If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat
+was by the howling of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be
+true in one case, but certainly not in the other. For by great good
+luck I was near the pack, following a fresh trail in the gray,
+breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the second deer; and there was
+not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or a trail cry or even
+a growl of any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence, as
+wolves commonly do, their howling being a thing apart from their
+hunting. The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles of densely
+wooded hills and valleys between him and his pack.
+
+Do you ask, “How was it possible to know all this?” From the story the
+snow told. At daybreak I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and was
+following it stealthily, with many a cautious détour and look ahead,
+for they are unbelievably shy brutes; and so it happened that I came
+upon the carcass of the deer only a few minutes after the wolves had
+fed and roamed lazily off toward their day-bed. I followed them too
+eagerly, and alarmed them before I could pick the big one I wanted;
+whereupon they took to rough country, traveling a pace that left me
+hopelessly far behind. When I returned to the deer, to read how the
+wolves had surprised and killed their game, I noticed the fresh trail
+of a solitary wolf coming in at right angles to the trail of the
+hunting pack. It was the limper again, who had just eaten what he
+wanted and trailed off by himself. I followed and soon jumped him, and
+took after him on the lope, thinking I could run him down or at least
+come near enough for a revolver-shot; but that was a foolish notion.
+Even on three legs he whisked through the thick timber so much easier
+than I could run on snow-shoes that I never got a second glimpse of
+him.
+
+By that time I was bound to know, if possible, how the limper happened
+to find this second deer for his comfort; so I picked up his incoming
+trail and ran it clear back to his den under the windfall, from which
+he had come as straight as if he knew exactly where he was heading. His
+trail was from eastward; what little air was stirring came from the
+south; so that it was impossible for his nose to guide him to the meat
+even had he been within smelling distance, as he certainly was not. The
+record in the snow was as plain as any other print, and from it one
+might reasonably conclude that either the wolves can send forth a
+silent food-call, with some added information, or else that a solitary
+wolf may be so in touch with his pack-mates that he knows not only
+where they are, but also, in a general way, what they are doing.
+
+In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou is rather a witless brute;
+but he, too, has his “uncanny” moods, and one who patiently follows
+him, with deeper interest in his anima than in his antlered head, finds
+him frequently doing some odd or puzzling thing which may indicate a
+perception more subtle than that of his dull eyes or keen ears or
+almost perfect nose. Here is one example of Megaleep’s peculiar way:
+
+I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day on the barrens
+(treeless plains or bogs) of the Renous River in New Brunswick. For
+hours I had followed through alternate thick timber and open bog
+without alarming or even seeing my game. The animals were plainly on
+the move, perhaps changing their feeding-ground; and when Megaleep
+begins to wander no man can say where he will go, or where stop, or
+what he is likely to do next. Once, after trailing him eight or ten
+miles, twice jumping him, I met him head-on, coming briskly back in his
+own tracks, as if to see what was following him. From the trail I read
+that there were a dozen animals in the herd, and that one poor wounded
+brute lagged continually behind the others. He was going on three legs;
+his right forefoot, the bone above it shattered by some blundering
+hunter’s bullet, swung helplessly as he hobbled along, leaving its
+pathetic record in the snow.
+
+On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of barrens, halting to
+search the trail ahead, my eye caught a motion far across the open, and
+through the field-glass I saw my herd for the first time, resting
+unsuspiciously on the farther edge of the barren, a full mile or more
+away. From my feet the trail led down through a dense fringe of
+evergreen, and then straight out across the level plain. A few of the
+caribou were lying down; others moved lazily in or out of the forest
+that shut in the barren on that side; and as I watched them two
+animals, yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads together for a pushing
+match, like domestic calves at play.
+
+Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping near the edge of it
+but always out of sight in the evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary
+caribou trail, the trail of the cripple, who had evidently wearied and
+turned aside to rest, perhaps knowing that his herd was near the end of
+its journey. A little farther on I jumped him out of a fir thicket, and
+watched him a moment as he hobbled deeper into the woods, heading away
+to the west. The course surprised me a little, for his mates were
+northward; and at the thought I quickly found an opening in the cover
+and turned my glass upon the other caribou. Already they were in wild
+alarm. For a brief interval they ran about confusedly, or stood tense
+as they searched the plain and the surrounding woods for the source of
+danger; then they pushed their noses out and racked away at a marvelous
+pace, crossing the barren diagonally toward me and smashing into the
+woods a short distance ahead, following a course which must soon bring
+them and their wounded mate together. If I were dealing with people, I
+might say confidently that they were bent on finding out what the alarm
+was about; but as I have no means of knowing the caribou motive, I can
+only say that the two trails ran straight as a string through the
+timber to a meeting-point on the edge of another barren to the
+westward.
+
+If you would reasonably explain the matter, remember that these
+startled animals were far away from me; that the cripple and myself
+were both hidden from their eyes, and that I was moving upwind and
+silently. It was impossible that they should hear or see or smell me;
+yet they were on their toes a moment after the cripple started up, as
+if he had rung a bell for them. It was not the first time I had
+witnessed a herd of animals break away when, as I suspected, they had
+received some silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the last;
+but it was the only time when I could trace the whole process without
+break or question from beginning to end. And when, to test the matter
+to the bottom, I ran the trail of the herd back to where they had been
+resting, there was no track of man or beast in the surrounding woods to
+account for their flight.
+
+One may explain this as a mere coincidence, which is not an
+explanation; or call it another example of the fact that wild animals
+are “queer,” which is not a fact; but in my own mind every action of
+the caribou and all the circumstances point to a different
+conclusion—namely, that the fear or warning or impulse of one animal
+was instantly transferred to others at a distance. I think, also, that
+the process was not wholly unconscious or subconscious, but that one
+animal sent forth his warning and the others acted upon it more or less
+intelligently. This last is a mere assumption, however, which cannot be
+proved till we learn to live in an animal’s skin.
+
+It is true that the event often befalls otherwise, since you may jump
+one animal without alarming others of the same herd; and it is possible
+that the degree or quality of the alarm has something to do with its
+carrying power, as we feel the intense emotion of a friend more quickly
+than his ordinary moods. In this case the solitary caribou was
+tremendously startled; for I was very near, and the first intimation he
+had of me, or I of him, was when my snow-shoe caught on a snag and I
+pitched over a log almost on top of him. Yet the difficulty of drawing
+a conclusion from any single instance appears in this: that I have more
+than once stalked, killed and dressed an animal without disturbing
+others of his kind near at hand (it may be that no alarm was sent out,
+for the animal was shot before he knew the danger, and in the deep
+woods animals pay little attention to the sound of a rifle); and again,
+when I have been trying to approach a herd from leeward, I have seen
+them move away hurriedly, silently, suspiciously, in obedience to some
+warning which seemed to spread through the woods like a contagion.
+
+The latter experience is common enough among hunters of big game, who
+are often at a loss to explain the sudden flight of animals that a
+moment ago, under precisely the same outward influences, were feeding
+or resting without suspicion. Thus, you may be stalking a big herd of
+elk, or wapiti, which are spread out loosely over half a mountainside.
+You are keen for the master bull with the noble antlers; nothing else
+interests you, more’s the pity; but you soon learn that the cunning old
+brute is hidden somewhere in the midst of the herd, depending on the
+screen of cow-elk to warn him of danger to his precious skin. Waiting
+impatiently till this vanguard has moved aside, you attempt to worm
+your way nearer to the hidden bull. You are succeeding beautifully, you
+think, when a single cow that you overlooked begins to act uneasily.
+She has not seen or heard you, certainly, and the wind is still in your
+favor; but there she stands, like an image of suspicion, head up,
+looking, listening, testing the air, till she makes up her mind she
+would as lief be somewhere else, when without cry or grunt or warning
+of any kind that ears can hear she turns and glides rapidly away.
+
+Now if you value animal lore above stuffed skins, or experience above
+the babble of hunting naturalists, forget the big bull and his
+greed-stirring antlers; scramble quickly to the highest outlook at
+hand, and use your eyes. No alarm has been sounded; the vast silence is
+unbroken; yet for some mysterious reason the whole herd is suddenly on
+the move. To your right, to your left, near at hand or far away, bushes
+quiver or jump; alert brown forms appear or vanish like shadows, all
+silent and all heading in the direction taken by the first sentinel.
+One moment there are scores of elk in sight, feeding or resting
+quietly; the next they are gone and the great hillside is lifeless. The
+thrill of that silent, moving drama has more wisdom in it, yes, and
+more pleasure, than the crash of your barbarous rifle or the convulsive
+kicking of a stricken beast that knows not why you should kill him.
+
+Such is the experience, known to almost every elk-hunter who has
+learned that life is more interesting than death; and I know nothing of
+deer nature to explain it save this—that the whole herd has suddenly
+felt and understood the silent impulse to go, and has obeyed it without
+a question, as the young wolf or fox cub obeys the silent return call
+of his watchful mother.
+
+Such impulses seem to be more common and more dependable among the
+whales, which have rudimentary or imperfect sense-organs, but which are
+nevertheless delicately sensitive to external impressions, to the
+approach of unseen danger, to the movements of the tiny creatures on
+which they feed, to changes of wind or tide and to a falling barometer,
+as if nature had given them a first-class feeling apparatus of some
+kind to make up for their poor eyes and ears. Repeatedly have I been
+struck by this extraordinary sensitiveness when watching the monstrous
+creatures feeding with the tide in one of the great bays of the
+Newfoundland or the Labrador coast. If I lowered a boat to approach one
+of them, he would disappear silently before I could ever get near
+enough to see clearly what he was doing. That seemed odd to me; but
+presently I began to notice a more puzzling thing: at the instant my
+whale took alarm every other whale of the same species seemed to be
+moved by the same impulse, sounding when the first sounded, or else
+turning with him to head for the open sea.
+
+A score of times I tried the experiment, and commonly, but not
+invariably, with the same result. I would sight a few leviathans
+playing or feeding, shooting up from the deep, breaching half their
+length out of water to fall back with a tremendous souse; and through
+my glasses I would pick up others here or there in the same bay.
+Selecting a certain whale, I would glide rapidly toward him, crouching
+low in the dory and sculling silently by means of an oar over the
+stern. By some odd channel of perception (not by sight, certainly, for
+I kept out of the narrow range of his eye, and a whale is not supposed
+to smell or hear) he would invariably get wind of me and go down; and
+then, jumping to my feet, I would see other whales in the distance
+catch the instant alarm, some upending as they plunged to the deeps,
+others whirling seaward and forging full speed ahead.
+
+This observation of mine is not unique, as I supposed, for later I
+heard it echoed as a matter of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I
+talked with my friend, Captain Rule, about the ways of the great
+creatures he had followed in the old whaling-days, he said, “The
+queerest habit of a whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul of,
+was this: when I got my boat close enough to a sperm-whale to put an
+iron into him, every other sperm-whale within ten miles would turn
+flukes, as if he had been harpooned, too.” But he added that he had not
+noticed the same contagion of alarm, not in the same striking or
+instantaneous way, when hunting the right or Greenland whale—perhaps
+because the latter is, as a rule, more solitary in its habits.
+
+Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the observation of most
+folk; but the winter birds in your own yard may some time give you a
+hint, at least, of the same mysterious transference of an impulse over
+wide distances. When you scatter food for them during a cold snap or
+after a storm (it is better not to feed them regularly, I think,
+especially in mild weather when their proper food is not covered with
+snow) your bounty is at first neglected except by the house sparrows
+and starlings. Unlike our native birds, these imported foreigners are
+easily “pauperized,” seeking no food for themselves so long as you take
+care of them. They keep tabs on you, also, waiting patiently about the
+house, and soon learn what it means when you emerge from your back door
+on a snowy morning with a broom in one hand and a pan in the other.
+They are feeding greedily the moment your back is turned, and for a
+time they are the only birds at the table. When they have gorged
+themselves, for they have no manners, a few tree-sparrows and juncos
+flit in to eat daintily. Then suddenly the wilder birds appear—jays,
+chickadees, siskins, kinglets and, oh, welcome! a flock of
+bob-whites—coming from you know not where, in obedience to a summons
+which you have not heard. Some of these may have visited the yard in
+time past, and are returning to it now, hunger driven; but others you
+have never before met within the city limits, and a few have their
+accustomed dwelling in the pine woods, which are miles away. How did
+these hungry hermits suddenly learn that food was here?
+
+The answer to that question is simple, and entirely “sensible” if you
+think only of birds that live or habitually glean in your neighborhood.
+Some of them saw you scatter the food, or else found it by searching,
+while others spied these lucky ones feeding and came quickly to join
+the feast. For birds that live wider afield there is also an
+explanation that your senses can approve, though it is probably wrong
+or only half right: from a distance they chanced to see wings speeding
+in the direction of your yard, and followed them expectantly because
+wings may be as eloquent as voices, the flight of a bird when he is
+heading for food being very different from the flight of the same bird
+when he is merely looking for food. But these most rare visitors,
+kinglets or pine-finches or grosbeaks or bob-whites, that never before
+entered your yard, and that would not be here now had you not thought
+to scatter food this morning,—at these you shake your head, calling it
+chance or Providence or mystery, according to your mood or disposition.
+To me, after observing the matter closely many times, the reasonable
+explanation of these rare visitors is that either wild birds know how
+to send forth a silent food-call or, more likely, that the excitement
+of feeding birds spreads powerfully outward, and is felt by other
+starving birds, alert and sensitive, at a distance beyond all possible
+range of sight or hearing. By no other hypothesis can I account for the
+fact that certain wild birds make their appearance in my yard at a
+moment when a number of other birds are eagerly feeding, and at no
+other time, though I watch for them from one year’s end to another.
+
+Like every other explanation, whether of stars or starlings, this also
+leads to a greater mystery. The distance at which such a summoning call
+can be felt by others must be straitly limited, else would all the
+starving birds of a state be flocking to my yard on certain mornings;
+and the force by which the silent call is projected is as unknown as
+the rare mental ether which bears its waves or vibrations in all
+directions. Yet the problem need not greatly trouble us, since the
+answer, when it comes, will be as natural as breathing. If silent or
+telepathic communication exists in nature, and I think it surely does,
+the mystery before us is no greater than that which daily confronts the
+astronomer or the wireless operator. One measures the speed of light
+from Orion; the other projects his finger-touch across an ocean; but
+neither can tell or even guess the quality of the medium by which the
+light or the electric wave is carried to its destination.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE SWARM SPIRIT
+
+
+This is a chapter on the wing drill of birds, the swarming of bees, the
+panics and unseasonal migrations of larger or smaller beasts, and other
+curious phenomena in which the wild creatures of a flock or herd all
+act in unison, doing the same thing at the same time, as if governed by
+a single will rather than by individual motives. If it should turn out
+that the single will were expressed in a voice or cry, or even in a
+projected impulse, then are we again face to face with our problem of
+animal communication.
+
+Of the fact of collective action there is no doubt, many naturalists
+having witnessed it; and there is also a strictly orthodox explanation.
+Thus, when you see a large flock of crows “drilling” in the spring or
+autumn, rising or falling or wheeling all together with marvelous
+precision, the ornithologists resolve the matter by saying that the
+many crows act as one crow because they follow a “collective impulse”;
+that is, because the same impulse to rise or fall or wheel seizes upon
+them all at precisely the same moment. And this they tell you quite
+simply, as if pointing out an obvious fact of natural history, when in
+reality they are showing you the rarest chimera that ever looked out of
+a vacuum.
+
+Now the wonderful wing drill of certain birds has something in it which
+I cannot quite fathom or understand, not even with a miracle of
+collective impulse to help me; yet I have observed two characteristics
+of the ordered flight which may help to dispel the fog of assumption
+that now envelops it. The first is, that the drill is seen only when an
+uncommonly large number of birds of the same kind are gathered
+together, on a sunny day of early spring, as a rule, or in the
+perfection of autumn weather.
+
+The starlings [3] furnish us an excellent example of this peculiarity.
+For months at a stretch you see them about the house, first in pairs,
+next in family groups, then in larger companies, made up, I think, of
+birds raised in the same neighborhood and probably all more or less
+related; but though you watch these companies attentively from dawn to
+dusk, you shall never see them going through any unusual wing drill.
+Then comes an hour when flocks of starlings appear on all sides,
+heading to a common center. They gather in trees here or there about
+the edges of a great field or a strip of open beach, all jabbering like
+the blackbirds, which they imitate in their cries, flitting about in
+ceaseless commotion, but apparently keeping their family or tribal
+organization intact. Suddenly, as at a signal, they all launch
+themselves toward the center of the field; the hundred companies unite
+in one immense flock, and presto! the drill is on. The birds are no
+longer individuals, but a single-minded myriad, which wheels or veers
+with such precision that the ash of their ten-thousand wings when they
+turn is like the flicker of a signal-glass in the sun.
+
+The same characteristic of uncommon numbers holds true of the crows
+and, indeed, of all other species of birds, save one, that ever
+practise the wing drill. Wild geese when in small companies, each a
+family unit, have a regular and beautiful flight in harrow-shaped
+formation; but I have never witnessed anything like a wing drill among
+them save on one occasion, when a thousand or more of the birds were
+gathered together for a few days of frolic before beginning the
+southern migration. Nor have I ever seen the drill among thrushes or
+warblers or sparrows or terns or seagulls, which sometimes gather in
+uncounted numbers, but which do not, apparently, have the same motive
+that leads crows or starlings to unite in a kind of rhythmic air-dance
+on periodic occasions.
+
+A second marked characteristic of the wing drill is that it is
+invariably a manifestation of play or sport, and that the individual
+birds, though they keep the order of the play marvelously well, show in
+their looks and voices a suppressed emotional excitement. The drill is
+never seen when birds are migrating or feeding or fleeing from danger,
+though thousands of them may be together at such a time, but only when
+they assemble in a spirit of fun or exercise, and their bodily needs
+are satisfied, and the weather or the barometer is just right, and no
+enemy is near to trouble them. Whatever their motive or impulse,
+therefore, it is certainly not universal or even widespread among the
+birds, since most of them do not practise the drill; nor is it in the
+least like that mysterious impulse which suddenly sets all the
+squirrels of a region in migration, or calls the lemmings to hurry over
+plain and forest and mountain till they all drown themselves in the
+distant sea; for no sooner is the brief drill over than the companies
+scatter quietly, each to its own place, and the individual birds are
+again alert, inquisitive, well balanced, precisely as they were before.
+
+The drill is seen at its best among the plover, I think; and, curiously
+enough, these are the only birds I know that practise it frequently, in
+small or large numbers and in all weathers. I have often watched a
+flock come sweeping in to my decoys, gurgling like a thousand fifes
+with bubbles in them; and never have I met these perfectly drilled
+birds, which stay with us but a few hours on their rapid journey from
+the far north to the far south, without renewed wonder at their
+wildness, their tameness, their incomprehensible ways. That you may
+visualize our problem before I venture an explanation, here is what you
+may see if you can forget your gun to observe nature with a deeper
+interest:
+
+You have risen soon after midnight, called by the storm and the
+shrilling of passing plover, and long before daylight you are waiting
+for the birds on the burnt-over plain. Your “stand” is a hole in the
+earth, hidden by a few berry-bushes; and before you, at right angles
+with the course of the storm (for plover always wheel to head into the
+wind when they take the ground), are some scores of rudely painted
+decoys. As the day breaks you see against the east a motion as of
+wings, and your call rings out wild and clear, to be echoed on the
+instant. In response to your whistle the distant motion grows wildly
+fantastic; it begins to whirl and eddy, as if a wisp of fog were
+rolling swiftly down-wind; only in some mysterious fashion the fog
+holds together, and in it are curious flickerings. Those are plover,
+certainly; no other birds have that perfect unity of movement; and now,
+since they are looking for the source of the call they have just heard,
+you throw your cap in the air or wave a handkerchief to attract
+attention. There is an answering flash of white from the under side of
+their wings as the plover catch your signal and turn all at once to
+meet it. Here they come, driving in at terrific speed straight at you!
+
+It is better to stop calling now, because the plover will soon see your
+decoys; and these birds when on the ground make no sound except a low,
+pulsating whistle of welcome or recall. This is uttered but seldom, and
+unless you can imitate it, which is not likely, your whistling will do
+no good. Besides, it could not possibly be heard. Listen to that
+musical babel, and let your nerves dance to it! In all nature there is
+nothing to compare for utter wildness with the fluting of incoming
+plover.
+
+On they come, hundreds of quivering lines, which are the thin edges of
+wings, moving as one to a definite goal. Their keen eyes caught the
+first wave of your handkerchief in the distance; and now they see their
+own kind on the ground, as they think, and their babel changes as they
+begin to talk to them. Suddenly, and so instantaneously that it makes
+you blink, there is a change of some kind in every quivering pair of
+wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are sure that the
+plover are still coming, for you did not see them turn; but the lines
+grow smaller, dimmer, and you know that every bird in the flock has
+whirled, as if at command, and is now heading straight away. You put
+your fingers to your lips and send out the eery plover call again and
+again; but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better whistling. The
+quivering lines are now all blurred in one; with a final flicker they
+disappear below a rise of ground; the birds are gone, and you cease
+your vain calling. Then, when you are thinking you will never see that
+flock again, a cloud of wings shoot up from the plain against the
+horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous flight, not as a
+thousand individuals but as a unit, and the lines grow larger, clearer,
+as the plover come sweeping back to your decoys once more.
+
+Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it repeatedly on the Nantucket
+moors, many years ago. The only way I can explain the instantaneous
+change of flight is by the assumption, no longer strange or untested,
+that from some alarmed plover on the fringe or at the center of the
+flock a warning impulse is sent out, and the birds all feel and obey it
+as one bird. That the warning is a silent one I am convinced, for it
+seems impossible that any peculiar whistle could be heard or understood
+in that wild clamor of whistling. Nor is it a satisfactory hypothesis
+that one bird sees the danger or suspects the quality of the decoys,
+and all the others copy his swift flight; for in that case there must
+be succession or delay or straggling in the turning, and the impression
+left on the eye is not of succession, but of almost perfect unity of
+movement.
+
+The only other explanation of the plovers’ action is the one commonly
+found in the bird-books, to which I have already briefly referred, and
+which we must now examine more narrowly. It assumes that all the birds
+of a migrating flock are moved not by individual wills, but by a
+collective impulse or instinct, which affects them all alike at the
+same instant. In support of this favorite theory we are told to
+consider the bees, which are said to have no individual motives, and no
+need for them, since they blindly follow a swarm or hive instinct that
+makes them all precisely alike in their actions. The same swarm
+instinct appears often in the birds, but less strongly, because they
+are more highly developed creatures, with more need and therefore more
+capacity for individual incentive.
+
+This illustration of the hive is offered so confidently and accepted so
+readily, as if it were an axiom of natural history, that one hesitates
+to disturb the ancient idol in its wonted seat. Yet one might argue
+that any living impulse, whether in bees or birds, must proceed from a
+living source, and, if that be granted, speculate on the absorbing
+business of a nature or a heaven that should be perpetually interfering
+in behalf of every earthly flock or swarm or herd by sending the
+appropriate impulse at precisely the right moment. And when our
+speculation is at an end, I submit the fact that, when I have broken
+open a honey-tree in the woods, one bee falls upon the sweets to gorge
+himself withal, while another from the same swarm falls angrily upon me
+and dies fighting; which seems to upset the collective-impulse idol
+completely.
+
+I must confess here that I know very little about bees. They are still
+a mystery to me, and I would rather keep silence about them until I
+find one bee that I fancy I understand, or one man who offers something
+better than a very hazy or mystical explanation of a bee’s
+extraordinary action. Yet I have watched long hours at a hive, have
+handled a swarm without gloves or mask, and have performed a few
+experiments—enough to convince me that the collective-impulse theory
+does not always hold true to fact even among our honey-makers. Indeed,
+I doubt that it ever holds true, or that there is in nature any such
+mysterious thing as a swarm or flock or herd impulse.
+
+In the first place, the bees of the same swarm do not look alike or act
+alike except superficially; at least I have not so observed them. Study
+the heads or the feet of any two bees under a glass, and you shall find
+as much variety as in the heads or feet of any other two creatures of
+the same kind, whether brute or human. The lines of difference run
+smaller, to be sure; but they are always there. In action also the bees
+are variable; they do marvelously wise things at one moment, or
+marvelously stupid things at another; but they do not all and always do
+the same thing under the same circumstances, for when I have
+experimented with selected bees from the same hive I have noticed very
+different results; which leads me to suspect that even here I am
+dealing with individuals rather than with detached fragments of a
+swarm. It is hard, for example, to make a trap so simple that an
+imprisoned bee will find his way out of it; but when by great ingenuity
+you do at last make a trap so very simple that it seems any creature
+with legs must walk out by the open door, perhaps one bee in five will
+do the trick; while the other four wait patiently until they die for
+more simplicity.
+
+Again, while your eye often sees unity of action among the wild
+creatures, neither your reading nor your own reason will ever reveal a
+scrap of positive evidence that there is in nature any such convenient
+thing (humanly convenient, that is, for explanations) as a swarm or
+flock instinct; though, like the mythical struggle for existence, we
+are forever hearing about it or building theories upon it. So far as we
+know anything about instinct, it is neither collective nor incorporeal.
+It is, to use the definition of Mark Hopkins, which is as good as
+another and beautifully memorable, “a propensity prior to experience
+and independent of instruction.” And the only needful addition to this
+high-sounding definition is, that it is a “propensity” lodged in an
+individual, every time. It is not and cannot be lodged in a swarm or a
+hive; you must either put it into each of two bees or else put it
+between them, leaving them both untouched. In other words, the swarm
+instinct has logically no abiding-place and no reality; it is a castle
+in the air with no solid foundation to rest on.
+
+On its practical or pragmatic side also the theory is a failure, since
+the things bees are said to do in obedience to an incorporeal swarm
+instinct are more naturally and more reasonably explained by other
+causes. Bees swarm, apparently, in the lead or under the influence of
+individuals; and it needs only a pair of eyes to discover that there
+are plenty of individual laggards and blunderers in the process. They
+grow angry not all at once, but successively; not because a swarm
+instinct impels them to anger, but because one irritated bee gives off
+a pungent odor or raises a militant buzzing, and the others smell the
+odor or hear the buzzing and are inflamed by it, each through his own
+senses and by the working of his own motives. On a hot day you will see
+a few bees fanning air into the hive with their wings, and when these
+grow weary others take their places; but if it were a swarm instinct
+that impelled them, you would see all the bees fanning or all
+sweltering at the same moment. As for the honey-making instinct, on any
+early-spring day you will find a few bees working in the nearest
+greenhouse, while the others, which are supposed to be governed by the
+same collective impulse, are comfortably torpid in the hive or else
+eating honey faster than these enterprising ones can make it.
+
+I judge, therefore, that the communistic bees have some individual
+notions, and any show of individuality is so at variance with the
+common-impulse theory that it seems to illustrate Spencer’s definition
+of tragedy, which is, “a theory slain by a fact.” In short, bees have
+our common social instinct highly developed, or overdeveloped, and
+possibly they have also, like all the higher orders, a stronger or
+weaker instinct of imitation; but these are very different matters,
+more natural and more consistent with the facts than is the alleged
+swarm instinct.
+
+A scientific friend, the most observant ornithologist I have ever met,
+has just offered an interesting explanation of the flock or herd
+phenomena we are here considering. He finds little evidence of a swarm
+instinct, as distinct from our familiar social instinct; but he has
+often marveled at the wing drill of birds, and has twice witnessed an
+alarm or warning of danger spread silently among a herd of scattered
+beasts; and he accounts for the observed facts by the supposition that
+the minds (or what corresponds to the minds) of the lower orders are
+often moved not from within, but from without—that is, not by instinct
+or by sense impressions, not by what they or others of their kind may
+see or hear, but by some external and unknown influence. My caribou
+rushed away, he thinks, and my incoming plover turned as one bird from
+my decoys, because a warning impulse fell upon them at a moment when
+they were in danger, but knew it not; and they obeyed it, as they obey
+all their impulses, without conscious thought or knowledge of what they
+are doing or why they are doing it.
+
+Here is some suggestion of a very modern psychology which is inclined
+to regard the mind as a thought-receiving rather than as a
+thought-producing instrument, and with that I have some sympathy; but
+here is also a rejuvenation of the incorporeal swarm instinct and other
+fantastic or romantic notions of animals which preclude observation. If
+the anima of a bird or beast is so constituted that it can receive
+impulses from a mysterious and unknown source, what is to prevent it
+from receiving such silent impulses from another anima like itself? And
+why seek an unseen agent for the warning to my caribou or my plover
+when one of the creatures saw the danger and was enough moved by it to
+sound a mental tocsin?
+
+The trouble with my friend’s explanation, and with all others I have
+thus far heard or read, is twofold. First, like the swarm-impulse
+theory, it really explains nothing, but avoids one mystery or
+difficulty by taking refuge in another. There was a Hindu philosopher
+who used to teach, after the manner of his school, that the earth stood
+fast because it rested on the back of a great elephant; which was
+satisfactory till a thoughtful child asked, “But the elephant, what
+does he stand on?” So when I see intelligent caribou or plover fleeing
+from an unsensed danger, and am told that they have received an impulse
+from without, I am bound to ask, “Where did that impulse come from, and
+who sent it?” For emotional impulses do not drop like rain from the
+clouds, or fall like apples from unseen trees; they must have their
+source in a living, intelligent being of some kind, who must feel the
+impulse before sending it to others. No other explanation is humanly
+comprehensible.
+
+This leads to the second objection to the theory of external impulse,
+and to every other notion of a collective or incorporeal swarm
+instinct—namely, that it contradicts all the previous experience of the
+wild creature, or at least all educative experience, which lies plain
+and clear to our observation. To each bird and animal are given
+individual senses, individual wit and a personal anima; and each begins
+his mortal experience not in a great flock or herd, but always in
+solitary fashion, under the care and guidance of a mother animal that
+has a saving knowledge of a world in which the little one is a
+stranger. Thus, I watch the innocent fawn when it begins to follow the
+wary old doe, or the fledgling snipe as it leaves the nest under expert
+guidance, or the wonder-eyed cub coming forth from its den at the call
+of the gaunt old she-wolf. In each case I see a mother intelligently
+caring for her young, leading them to food, warding them from danger,
+calling them now to assemble or now to scatter; and before my eyes
+these ignorant youngsters quickly learn to adapt themselves to the
+mother’s ways and to obey her every signal. Sometimes I see them
+plainly when some manner of silent communication passes among them
+(something perhaps akin to that which passes when you catch a friend’s
+eye and send your thought or order to him across a crowded room), and
+it has even seemed to me, as recorded elsewhere in our observation of
+wolf and fox dens, that the young understand this silent communication
+more readily than they learn the meaning of audible cries expressive of
+food or danger.
+
+Such is the wild creature’s earliest experience, his training to
+accommodate himself to the world, and to ways that wiser creatures of
+his own kind have found good in the world. When his first winter draws
+near he is led by his mother to join the herd or pack or migrating
+flock; and he is then ready not for some mysterious new herd or flock
+instinct, but for the same old signals that have served well to guide
+or warn him ever since he was born. I conclude, therefore, naturally
+and reasonably, that my caribou broke away and my incoming plover
+changed their flight because one of their number detected danger and
+sent forth a warning impulse, which the others obeyed promptly because
+they were accustomed to just such communications. There was nothing
+unnatural or mysterious or even new in the experience. So far as I can
+see or judge, there is no place or need for a collective herd or flock
+impulse, and the birds and beasts have no training or experience by
+which to interpret such an impulse if it fell upon them out of heaven.
+
+Our human experience, moreover, especially that which befalls on the
+borderland of the subconscious world where the wild creatures mostly
+live, may give point and meaning to our natural philosophy. There are
+emotions, desires, impulses which may be conveyed by shouting; and
+there are others which may well be told without shouting, or even
+without words. A cheerful man radiates cheerfulness; a strong man,
+strength; a brave man, courage (we do not know to what extent or with
+what limitations); and a woman may be more irritated by a man who says
+nothing than by a man who says too much. These common daily trials may
+be as side-lights on the tremendous fact that love, fear, hate,—every
+intense emotion is a force in itself, a force to be reckoned with,
+apart from the cry or the look by which it is expressed; that all such
+emotions project themselves outward; and that possibly, or very
+probably, there is some definite medium to convey them, as an unknown
+medium which we call “ether” conveys the waves of light.
+
+It is true that we habitually receive such emotional impulses from
+others by means of our eyes or ears; but sometimes we apparently imbibe
+them through our skin, as Anthony Trollope said he learned Latin, and
+once in a way we receive them from another without knowing or thinking
+of the process at all. It is noteworthy that the most companionable
+people in the world are silent people, especially a silent friend, and
+that the silence of any man is invariably more eloquent than his
+speech. The silence of one man rests you like a melody; the silence of
+another bores you to yawning, perhaps because it is a “dead” silence;
+the quietude of a third excites your curiosity to such an extent that,
+for once in your life, you behave like a perfectly natural animal; that
+is, you go round the silent one, as it were, view him mentally from all
+sides, sniff at his opinions from leeward, whir your wings in his face
+like a sparrow, or stamp your foot at him like a rabbit—all this to
+stir him up and to uncover what interesting thing lies behind his
+silence. And why? Simply because every living man is silently,
+unconsciously projecting his real thought or feeling, and you are
+unconsciously understanding it or else making a vain conscious effort
+in that direction.
+
+Such experiences are commonly confined to a room, to the circle of an
+open fire; but they are not limited by necessity to any narrow reach,
+since there is nothing in a wall to hinder a man’s love or hate from
+passing through, or in the air to check its far-going, or in the nature
+of another man to prevent its reception. The influence of one person’s
+unvoiced will or purpose or warning or summons upon another person at a
+distance, should it turn out more common than we now believe possible
+because of our habit of speech, would be nothing unnatural or
+mysterious, but rather a true working of the subconscious or animal
+mind, which had its own way of communication before ever speech was
+invented.
+
+Whitman, who sometimes got hold of the tail end of philosophy (and who
+was wont to believe he could drag it out, like a trapped woodchuck, and
+whirl it around his head with barbaric whoops), was often seen at the
+burrow of this thought-transference doctrine:
+
+
+    These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why
+        are they?
+    Why are there men and women that while they are near me the
+        sunlight expands my blood?
+    Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
+    Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
+        thoughts descend upon me?
+    What is it that I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
+    What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
+    What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk
+        by and pause?
+    What gives me to be free to woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives
+        them to be free to mine?
+
+
+Again, our familiar human experience may throw some clearer light than
+ever comes from the laboratory of animal psychologists upon the action
+of gregarious brutes in their so-called blind panics, when they are
+said to be governed by some extraneous or non-individual herd impulse.
+How such a theory originated is a puzzle to one who has closely
+observed animals in the open, since their panics are never “blind,” and
+their “extraneous” impulse may often be traced to an alarmed animal of
+their own kind, or even to an excited human being, whose emotions are
+animal-like both in their manifestation and in their irritating effect.
+A dog is more easily roused by human than by canine excitement. A
+frightened rider sends his fear or irresolution in exaggerated form
+into the horse beneath him. The herd of swine that ran down a steep
+place into the sea were possessed, I should say, not by exorcised
+demons, but by the hysteria received directly from some man or woman of
+the excited crowd in the immediate neighborhood. Panic is more
+infectious than any fever, and knows no barriers between brute and
+human. Indeed, in a frightened crowd in the Subway, in a theater where
+smoke appears, or in any other scene of emotional excitement, you may
+in a few minutes observe actions more panicky, more suggestive of a
+herd impulse (if there be such a fantastic thing in orderly nature),
+than can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild animals.
+
+In my head at this moment is the vivid impression of a night when I was
+caught and carried away by a crowd of Italian socialists, twenty
+thousand frenzied men and a few ferocious women, that first eddied like
+a storm-tide about the great square under the cathedral at Milan,
+howling, shrieking, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously through
+choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at the innocent roof of the
+railroad station, as at a symbol of government. The roof was of glass,
+and the clattering smash of it seemed to get on the nerves of men, like
+the cry of sick-em! to an excited dog, rousing them to a senseless fury
+of destruction. Clear and thrilling above the tumult a bugle sang, like
+a note from heaven, and into the seething mass of humanity charged a
+squadron of cavalry, striking left or right with the flats of their
+sabers, raising a new hubbub of shrieks and imprecations as the weaker
+were trampled down. Fear? That crowd knew no more of fear just then
+than an upturned hive of bees. They met the charge with a roar, a
+hoarse, solid shout that seemed to sweep the cavalry away like smoke in
+the wind. Unarmed men swarmed at the horses like enraged baboons,
+hurling stones or curses as they went. The rush ended in a triumphant
+yell, and riderless horses, their eyes and nostrils aflame, went
+plunging, kicking, squealing through the pandemonium.
+
+There must have been something tremendously animal in the scene, after
+all; for when I recall it now I see, as if Memory had carved her statue
+of the event, an upreared horse with a crumpled rider toppling from the
+saddle; and I hear not the shouts or curses of men, but the horrible
+scream of a maddened brute.
+
+It was the night, many years ago, when news of disaster to the Italian
+army at Adowa broke loose, after being long suppressed, and I learned
+then for the first time what emotional excitement means when the gates
+are all down. One had to hold himself against it, as against a flood or
+a mighty wind. To yield, to lose self-control even for an instant, was
+to find oneself howling, reaching for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy,
+lifting a bare fist against charging horse or swinging steel, like the
+other lunatics. I caught a man by the shoulders, held him, and bade him
+in his own language tell me what the row was about; but he only stared
+at me wildly, his mouth open. I caught another, and he struck at my
+face; a third, and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one gave me a
+half-coherent answer, a man whom I dragged from under a saber and
+pushed into a side-street. His dear Ambrogio had been conscripted by
+the government, he howled (I suppose they had sent his son or brother
+with a disaffected Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and
+they were all robbers, oppressors, murderers—he finished by jerking
+loose from my grasp and hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again.
+
+Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that amazing scene and knowing
+nothing of its motive, I might easily have concluded that some
+mysterious herd impulse was driving all these creatures to they knew
+not what; but, being human, I knew perfectly well that even this
+unmanageable crowd had taken its cue from some leader; that the
+senseless emotion which inflamed them had originated with individuals,
+who had some ground for their passion; and that from the individual the
+excitement spread in pestilential fashion until the whole mob caught it
+and bent to it, as a field of grass bends to the storm.
+
+Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of logic through a long
+digression), when I go as a man among caribou or wolves or plover or
+crows, and see the whole herd or pack or flock acting as one, as if
+swayed by a single will, I see no reason why I should evoke an
+incorporeal swarm impulse, or “call a spirit from the vasty deep” of
+the unknown to explain their similarity of action, since there are
+natural causes which may account for the matter perfectly—familiar
+causes, too, which still influence men and women as they influence the
+remote wood folk.
+
+No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is rather an attempt to
+banish the delusion that there is any such thing as a distinct animal
+psychology. Science has many forms, and still plenty of delusions, but
+there is a basic principle to which she holds steadily—namely, that
+Nature is of one piece because her laws are constant. It follows that,
+if you know anything of a surety about your own mind, you may
+confidently apply the knowledge to any other mind in the universe,
+whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under
+the earth. The only question is, How far may the term “mind” be
+properly applied to the brute?
+
+That unanswered question does not immediately concern us, for in
+speaking of mind we commonly mean the conscious or reasoning human
+article, and we are dealing here with the subconscious mind, which
+seems to work after the same fashion whether it appears on two legs or
+four. A dog does not know why he becomes excited in a commotion that
+does not personally concern him, or why he feels impelled to hasten to
+an outcry from an unknown source, or why he looks up, contrary to all
+his habits, when everybody else is looking up; and neither does a man
+know why he does just such things. Man and brute both act in obedience
+to something deeper, more primal and more dependable than reason, and
+in this subconscious field they are akin; otherwise it would be
+impossible for a man ever to train or to understand a brute, and our
+companionable dogs would be as distant as the seraphim.
+
+When, therefore, the same unreasoning actions that are attributed to a
+mysterious collective impulse among birds or animals are found among
+men to depend on a succession of individual impulses, it is good
+psychology as well as good natural history to dismiss the whole herd
+instinct as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social and imitative
+instincts, the contagion of excitement, the outward projection of
+emotional impulses, the sensitive bodily nature of an animal which
+enables him to respond to such impulses even when they are
+unaccompanied by a voice or cry,—these are comparatively simple and
+“sensible” matters which explain all the phenomena of flock or herd
+life more naturally and more reasonably.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+WHERE SILENCE IS ELOQUENT
+
+
+Looking back a moment on our trail of animal “talk” before following it
+onward, we see, first, that birds and beasts have certain audible cries
+which convey a more or less definite meaning of food or danger or
+assembly; and second, that they apparently have also some “telepathic”
+faculty of sending emotional impulses to others of their kind at a
+distance. The last has not been proved, to be sure; we have seen little
+more than enough to establish it as a working hypothesis; but whether
+we study science or history or an individual bird or beast, it is
+better to follow some integrating method or principle than to blunder
+around in a chaos of unrelated details. And the hypothesis of silent
+communication certainly “works,” since it helps greatly to clarify
+certain observed phenomena of animal life that are otherwise darkly
+mysterious.
+
+When the same dimly defined telepathic power appears in a man or
+woman—so rarely that we are filled with wonder, as in the shadow of a
+great mystery or a great discovery—it is not a new but a very old
+matter, I think, being merely a survival or reappearance of a faculty
+that may have once been in common use among gregarious creatures. All
+men seem to have some hint or suggestion of telepathy in them, as shown
+by their ability to “speak with their eyes” or to influence their
+children by a look; and the few who have enough of it to be conspicuous
+receive it, undoubtedly, by some law or freak of heredity, such as
+enables one man in a million to wag his ears, or one in a thousand to
+follow a subconscious sense of direction so confidently that, after
+wandering about the big woods all day, he turns at nightfall and heads
+straight for his camp like a homing pigeon. The rest of us, meanwhile,
+by employing speech exclusively to express thought or emotion, and by
+habitually depending on five senses for all our impressions of the
+external world, have not only neglected but even lost all memory of the
+gift that once was ours. As an inevitable consequence Nature has taken
+her gift away, as she atrophies a muscle that is no longer used, or
+devitalizes the nerve of sight in creatures, such as the fishes of
+Mammoth Cave, that have lived long time in darkness.
+
+In previous chapters we have noted, as rare examples of telepathy in
+human society, that a mother may at times know when an absent son or
+husband is in danger, or that an African savage often knows when a
+stranger is approaching his village hid in the jungle; but there is
+another manifestation of the same faculty which is much more common,
+and which we have thus far overlooked, leaving it as an odd and totally
+unrelated thing without explanation. I refer to the man, known in
+almost every village, who has some special gift for training or
+managing animals, who seems to know instinctively what goes on in a
+brute’s head, and who can send his own will or impulse into the lower
+mind. I would explain that unrelated man, naturally, by the simple fact
+or assumption that he has inherited more than usual of the animals’
+gift of silent communication.
+
+I knew one such man, a harmless, half-witted creature, who loved to
+roam the woods alone by day or night, and whom the wild birds and
+beasts met with hardly a trace of the fear or suspicion they manifest
+in presence of other human beings. He was always friendly, peaceable,
+childlike, and unconsciously or subconsciously, I think, he could tame
+or influence these wild spirits by letting them feel his own.
+
+So also could an old negro, an ex-slave, with whom I used to go
+fox-hunting in my student days. He could train a dog or a colt in a
+tenth part of the time required by ordinary men, and he used no whip or
+petting or feeding, or any other device commonly employed by
+professional trainers. At times, indeed, his animals acted as if
+trained from the moment he touched or spoke to them. He had a mongrel
+lot of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows and horses; but they were a
+veritable happy family (on a cold night his cats would sleep with a
+setting hen, if they could find one, or otherwise with the foxhounds),
+and to see them all running to meet “Uncle” when he came home, or
+following at his heels or doing what he told them, was to wonder what
+strange animal language he was master of.
+
+At daybreak one winter morning I entered the old negro’s kitchen very
+quietly, and had a fire going and coffee sending forth its aroma before
+I heard him creaking down the stairs. I had traveled “across lots,”
+making no sound in the new-fallen snow, and, as I approached the house,
+had purposely kept its dark bulk between me and the dogs, which were
+asleep in their kennel some distance away. For a time all was quiet as
+only a winter dawn can be; but as we sat down to breakfast one of the
+hounds with a big bass voice suddenly broke out in an earth-shaking
+jubilation. The other hounds quickly caught up the clamor, yelling as
+if they had just jumped a fox, while two dogs of another breed were
+strangely silent; and then ’Poleon added his bit to the tumult by
+stamping, whinnying and finally kicking lustily on the boards of his
+stall. ’Poleon, by the way, was an old white horse that Uncle used to
+ride (he was “gittin’ too rheumaticky,” he said, to hunt with me
+afoot), and this sober beast was fair crazy to join the chase whenever
+a fox was afoot.
+
+The negro paid no attention to the noise; but as it went on increasing,
+and ’Poleon whinnyed more wildly, and the big-voiced hound kept up a
+continuous bellow that might have roused the seven sleepers, the
+unseemly racket got on my nerves, so early in the day.
+
+“What the mischief is the matter with Jum this morning?” I demanded.
+
+“Matter? Mischief?” echoed Uncle, as if surprised I did not understand
+such plain animal talk. “Why, ol’ Jum’s a-gwine fox-huntin’ dis mawny.
+He reckons he knows what we-all’s up to: and now de yother dawgs an’
+’Poleon dey reckons dey knows it, too. Jum’s tole um. Dat’s all de
+matter an’ de mischief.”
+
+“But how in the world should he know? You never go hunting now unless I
+tempt you, and none of the dogs saw or heard me come in,” I objected.
+
+Uncle chuckled at that, chuckled a long time, as if it were a good
+joke. “Trust ol’ Jum ter know when we-all’s gwine fox-huntin’,” he
+said. “You jes’ trust him. I specks he kinder pick de idee outer de air
+soon’s we thunk it, same’s he pick a fox scent. ’Tain’t no use tryin’
+ter lie ter Jum, ’cause you can’t fool ’im nohow. No, sir, when dat ol’
+dawg’s eroun’, you don’ wanter think erbout nothin’ you don’ want ’im
+ter know.”
+
+I had often marveled at Uncle, but now suddenly I thought I understood
+him. In his unconscious confession that he thought or felt with his
+animals, rather than spoke English to them, was probably the whole
+secret of his wonderful gift of training.
+
+The same “secret” is shared by the few men who have the gift of
+managing horses, and who can do more by a word or even a look than
+another man by bit and harness. I have heard the gift described by a
+professional horse-trainer as the “power of the human eye”; but that is
+nonsense set to melodrama. An eye is a bit of jelly, and means nothing
+without a will or communicating impulse behind it. When the spirit of a
+horse is once broken (and most of them are broken rather than trained
+by our methods) almost anybody can manage him, the blind as well as the
+seeing; but when a horse keeps the spirit of his wild ancestors, their
+timidity, their flightiness, their hair-trigger tendency to shy or to
+bolt, then I envy the man who can cross the gulf of ages and put
+something of his own steadiness into the nervous brute.
+
+This steadying process seems to be wholly a matter of spirit, so far as
+I have observed it, and whatever passes from man to brute passes
+directly, without need of audible speech. For example, a friend of
+mine, a very quiet man of few words, once brought home a magnificent
+“blooded” horse which he had bought for a song because “nobody could
+handle him.” The horse was not vicious in any way, but seemed to have a
+crazy impulse to run himself to death—an impulse so strong that even
+now, when he is past twenty years old, he cannot be turned loose for a
+moment in a farm pasture. He had never been driven save with a powerful
+curb; even so, he would drag the carriage along by the reins, and an
+hour of such driving left a strong man’s arms half paralyzed by the
+strain. Yet at the first trial his new owner put a soft rubber bit in
+his mouth, flipped the lines loosely across his back, and controlled
+him by a word.
+
+Some years later I was riding behind that same horse, jogging quietly
+along a country road, when my friend, with an odd twinkle in his eye,
+said, “Take the reins a moment while I get out this robe.” I took them,
+and what followed seemed like magic or bedevilment. I had noticed that
+the reins were loose, just “feeling” the horse’s mouth; I shifted them
+to my hand very quietly, without stirring a hair, and blinders on the
+bridle prevented the horse from seeing the transfer. Yet hardly had I
+touched them when something from my hand (or from my soul, for aught I
+know) flowed along the leather and filled the brute with fire. He flung
+up his head, as if I had driven spurs into him, and was away like a
+shot.
+
+Again, I was crossing the public square of Nantucket one morning when I
+saw a crowd of excited men and boys eddying at a safe distance around a
+horse—an ugly, biting brute that had once almost torn the side of my
+face off when I passed too close to him, minding my own affairs. Now he
+was having one of his regular tantrums, squealing, kicking, plunging or
+backing, while his driver, who had leaped to the ground, alternately
+lashed and cursed him. I heard an angry voice near me utter the single
+word “Fools!” and saw a stranger brush some men aside and stand
+directly in front of the horse, which grew quiet on the instant. The
+stranger went nearer, pulled the horse’s head down and laid his face
+against it; and there they stood, man and brute, like carved statues.
+It was as if one were whispering a secret, and the other listening.
+Then the man said, “Come along, boy,” and walked down the square, the
+horse following at his heels like a trained dog.
+
+Watching the scene, my first thought was that the horse recognized a
+former and kinder master; but the man assured me, when I followed him
+up, that he had never spoken to the animal till that moment, and that
+he could do the same with any refractory horse he had ever met. “Try it
+with that one,” I said promptly, pointing to a nervous horse that,
+feeling the excitement of the recent affair, was jerking and frothing
+at his hitch-rope. The man smiled his acceptance of the challenge,
+stepped in front of the horse, and looked at him steadily. What he
+thought or willed, what feeling or impulse he sent out, I know not; but
+certainly some silent communication passed, which the horse recognized
+by forward-pointing ears and a low whinny of pleasure. Then the man
+unsnapped the rope from the bridle ring, turned away without a word,
+and the horse followed him across the square and back again to the
+hitching-post.
+
+When I asked how the thing was done, the man answered with entire
+frankness that he did not know. It “just came natural” to him, he said,
+to understand horses, and he had always been able to make them do
+almost anything he wanted. But he had no remarkable power over other
+animals, so far as I could learn, and was uncommonly shy of dogs, even
+of little dogs, regarding them all alike as worthless or dangerous
+brutes.
+
+Some of my readers may recall, in this connection, the shabby-genteel
+old man who used to amuse visitors in the public gardens of Paris by
+playing with the sparrows, some twenty-odd years ago. So long as he
+went his way quietly the birds paid no more attention to him than to
+any other stroller; but the moment he began to chirp some wild and
+joyous excitement spread through the trees. From all sides the sparrows
+rushed to him, alighting on his hat or shoulders, clamoring loudly for
+the food which they seemed to know was in his pockets, but which he
+would not at first give them. When he had a crowd of men and women
+watching him (for he was vain of his gift, and made a small living by
+passing his hat after an entertainment) he would single out a
+cock-sparrow from the flock and cry, “What! you here again, Bismarck,
+you scoundrel?” Then he would abuse the cock-sparrow, calling him a
+barbarian, a Prussian, a mannerless intruder who had no business among
+honorable French sparrows; and finally, pretending to grow violently
+angry, he would chase Bismarck from bench to bench and throw his hat at
+him. And Bismarck would respond by dodging the hat, chirping blithely
+the while, as if it were a good joke, and would fly back to peck at the
+crust of bread which the old man held between his lips or left sticking
+out of his pocket.
+
+One might have understood this as a mere training trick if Bismarck
+were always the same; but he was any cock-sparrow that the man chanced
+to pick out of a flock. After playing with the birds till they wearied
+of it, he would feed them, pass the hat, and stroll away to repeat his
+performance with another flock in another part of the gardens. That
+these wary and suspicious birds, far more distrustful of man than the
+sparrows of the wilderness, understood his mental attitude rather than
+his word or action; that he could make them feel his kindliness, his
+camaraderie, his call to come and play, even while he pretended to
+chase them,—this was the impression of at least one visitor who watched
+him again and again at his original entertainment.
+
+Some kind of communication must have passed silently between the actor
+and one of his audience; for presently, though I never spoke to the old
+man, but only watched him keenly, he picked me out for personal
+attention. Whereupon I cultivated his acquaintance, invited him to dine
+and fed him like a duke, and thought I had gained his confidence by
+taking him to see a big wolf of mine that might well have puzzled any
+student of birds or beasts. The wolf was one of a wild pack that had
+recently arrived at the zoo from Siberia, where they had been caught in
+a pit and shipped away with all their savagery in them. Through some
+freak of nature this one wolf had attached himself to me, like a lost
+dog; by some marvelously subtle perception he would recognize my coming
+at a distance, even in a holiday crowd, and would thrust his grim
+muzzle against the bars of his cage to howl or roar till I came and
+stretched out a hand to him, though he was as wild and “slinky” as the
+rest of the pack to everybody else, even to the keeper who fed him.
+That interested the sparrow-tamer, of course; but he was silent or too
+garrulous whenever I approached the thing I wanted to know. He would
+not tell me how he won the birds, but made a mystery and hocus-pocus of
+the natural gift by which he earned a precarious living.
+
+The same “mystery” cropped out later, amid very different scenes, in
+the interior of Newfoundland. Coming down beside a salmon river one
+day, my Indian, a remarkable man with an almost uncanny power of
+calling wild creatures of every kind, pointed to a hole high on the
+side of a stub, and said, “Go, knock-um dere; see if woodpecker at
+home.” I went and knocked softly, but nothing happened. “Knock-um
+again, knock-um little louder,” said Matty. I knocked again, more
+lustily, and again nothing happened. Then the Indian came and rapped
+the tree with his knuckles, while I stood aside; and instantly a
+woodpecker that was brooding her eggs stuck her head out of the hole
+and looked down at her visitor inquisitively.
+
+The next day at the same place we repeated the same performance
+precisely, after our morning fishing; and again the interesting thing
+to me was, not the bird’s instant appearance at the Indian’s summons,
+but the curiously intent way in which she turned her head to look down
+at him. When he showed his craft again and again, at the doors of other
+woodpeckers that were not interested in my knocking, I demanded, “Now,
+Matty, tell me how you do it.”
+
+But Matty only laughed. When we are alone in the woods he has a fine
+sense of humor, though grim enough at other times. “Oh, woodpecker know
+me; he look down at me,” he said; and that was all I could ever get out
+of him.
+
+So, though I have seen the gift in operation several times, I have not
+yet found the man who had it and who could or would give me any
+explanation. There is no doubt in my own mind, however, that the negro,
+the Frenchman, and the Indian, and all others who exercise any unusual
+influence over animals, do so by reason of their subconscious power to
+“talk” or to convey impulses without words, as gregarious wild
+creatures commonly talk among themselves. At least, I can understand
+much of what I see among birds and brutes by assuming that they talk in
+this fashion.
+
+
+
+Such a power seems mysterious, incredible, in a civilized world of
+sense and noise; but I fancy that every man and woman speaks silently
+to the brute without being conscious of the fact. “If you want to see
+game, leave your gun at home,” is an accepted saying among hunters; but
+the reason for the excellent admonition has not been forthcoming. When
+you have hunted six days in vain, and then on a quiet Sunday stroll
+come plump upon noble game that seems to have no fear, you are apt to
+think of the curiosities of luck, but even here also are you under the
+sway of psychological law and order. As you go quietly through the
+woods, projecting your own “aura” of peace or sympathy, it may be, in
+an invisible wave ahead of you, there is nothing disturbing or
+inharmonious in either your thoughts or your actions; and at times the
+wild animal seems curiously able to understand the one as well as the
+other, just as certain dogs know at first glance whether a stranger is
+friendly or hostile or afraid of them. When you are excited or lustful
+to kill, something of your emotional excitement seems to precede you;
+it passes over many wild birds and beasts, all delicately sensitive,
+before you come within their sense range; and when you draw near enough
+to see them you often find them restless, suspicious, though as yet no
+tangible warning of danger has floated through the still woods. At the
+first glimpse or smell of you they bound away, your action in hiding or
+creeping making evident the danger which thus far was only vaguely
+felt. But if you approach the same animals gently, without mental
+excitement of any kind, sometimes, indeed, they promptly run away,
+especially in a much-hunted region; but more frequently they meet you
+with a look of surprise; they move alertly here or there to get a
+better view of you, and show many fascinating signs of curiosity before
+they glide away, looking back as they go.
+
+Such has been the illuminating experience of one man, at least,
+repeated a hundred times in the wilderness. I have been deep in the
+woods when my food-supply ran low, or was lost in the rapids, or went
+to feed an uninvited bear, and it was then a question of shoot game or
+go hungry; but the shooting was limited by the principle that a wild
+animal has certain rights which a man is bound to respect. I have
+always held, for example, that a hunter has no excuse for trying long
+shots that are beyond his ordinary skill; that it is unpardonable of
+him to “take a chance” with noble game or to “pump lead” after it,
+knowing as he does that the chances are fifty to one that, if he hits
+at all, he will merely wound the animal and deprive it of that gladness
+of freedom which is more to it than life. So when I have occasionally
+gone out to kill a buck (a proceeding which I heartily dislike) I have
+sometimes hunted for days before getting within close range of the
+animal I wanted. But when, in the same region and following the same
+trails, I have entered the big woods with no other object than to enjoy
+their stillness, their fragrance, their benediction, it is seldom that
+I do not find plenty of deer, or that I cannot get as near as I please
+to any one of them. More than once in the woods I have touched a wild
+deer with my hand (as recorded in another chapter) and many times I
+have had them within reach of my fishing-rod.
+
+It is even so with bear, moose, caribou and other creatures—your best
+“shots” come when you are not expecting them, and it is not chance, but
+psychological law, which determines that you shall see most game when
+you leave your gun at home. A hunter must be dull indeed not to have
+discovered that the animal he approaches peaceably, trying to make his
+eyes or his heart say friendly things, is a very different animal from
+the one he stalks with muscles tense and eyes hard and death in the
+curl of his trigger finger.
+
+I once met an English hunter, a forest officer in India, who told me
+that for the first year of his stay in the jungle he was “crazy” to
+kill a tiger. He dreamed of the creatures by night; he hunted them at
+every opportunity and in every known fashion by day; he never went
+abroad on forest business without a ready rifle; and in all that time
+he had just one glimpse of a running tiger. One day he was led far from
+his camp by a new bird, and as he watched it in a little opening,
+unarmed and happy in his discovery, a tiger lifted its huge head from
+the grass, not twenty steps away. The brute looked at him steadily for
+a few moments, then moved quietly aside, stopped for another look, and
+leaped for cover.
+
+That put a new idea into the man’s head, and the idea was emphasized by
+the fact that the unarmed natives, who had no desire to meet a tiger,
+were frequently seeing the brutes in regions where he hunted for them
+in vain. As an experiment he left his rifle at home for a few months;
+he practised slipping quietly through the jungle without physical or
+mental excitement, as the natives go, and presently he, too, began to
+meet tigers. In one district he came close to four in as many months,
+and every one acted in the same half-astonished, half-inquisitive way.
+Then, thinking he understood his game, he began to carry his rifle
+again, and had what he called excellent luck. The beautiful tiger skins
+he showed me were a proof of it.
+
+To me this man was a rare curiosity, being the only Indian or African
+hunter I ever met who went into the jungle alone, man fashion, and who
+did not depend on unarmed natives or beaters or trackers for finding
+his game. His excellent “luck” was, as I judge, simply a realization of
+the fact that human excitement may carry far in the still woods, and be
+quite as disturbing, as the man-scent or the report of a rifle.
+
+Does all this sound strange or incredible to you, like a chapter from a
+dream-book? However it may sound, it is the crystallized conviction
+resulting from years of intimate observation of wild beasts in their
+native woods; and if you consider it a moment without prejudice, it may
+appear more natural or familiar, like a chapter from life. If the man
+who sits opposite you can send his good or evil will across a room, so
+that you feel his quality without words, or if he can so express
+himself silently when he enters your gate that certain dogs instantly
+take his measure and welcome or bite him, it is not at all improbable
+that the same man can project the same feelings when he goes afield, or
+that sensitive wild creatures can understand or “feel him out” at a
+considerable distance.
+
+To weigh that probability fairly you must first get rid of your ancient
+hunting lore. Hunters are like the Medes and Persians in that they have
+laws which alter not; and I suppose if you met ancient Nimrod in the
+flesh, his admonition would be, “Keep to leeward and stalk carefully,
+breaking no twig, for your game will run away if it winds or hears
+you.” That is the first rule I learned for big-game hunting, and it is
+founded on fact. But there are two other facts I have observed these
+many years, which Nimrod will never mention: the first, that when you
+are keenly hunting, it often happens that game breaks away in alarm
+before it winds or sees or hears you; and the second, that when you are
+not hunting, but peaceably roving the woods, going carelessly and
+paying no attention to the wind, you often come very close to wild
+game, which stops to watch you curiously after it has seen you and
+heard your step or voice and sampled your quality in the air. These two
+facts, implying some kind of mental or emotional contact between the
+natural man and the natural brute, are probably not accidental or
+unrelated, and we are here trying to find the natural law or principle
+of which they are the occasional and imperfect expression.
+
+This whole matter of silent communication may appear less strange if we
+remember that most wild creatures are all their lives accustomed to
+matters which sense-blinded mortals find mysterious or incredible. Why
+a caterpillar, which lives but a few hours when all the leaves are
+green, should make a cocoon of a single leaf and with a thread of silk
+bind that leaf to its stem before he wraps himself up in it, as if he
+knew that every leaf must fall; or why a spider, adrift for the first
+time on a chip, should immediately send out filaments on the air
+currents and, when one of his filaments cleaves to something solid
+across the water, pull himself and his raft ashore by it; or why a
+young bear, which has never seen a winter, should at the proper time
+prepare a den for his long winter sleep,—a thousand such matters, which
+are as A B C to natural creatures, are to us as incomprehensible as
+hieroglyphics to an Eskimo. That a sensitive animal should know by
+feeling (that is, by the reception of a silent message) whether an
+approaching animal is in a dangerous or a harmless mood is really no
+more remarkable than that he should know, as he surely does, when it is
+time for him to migrate or to make ready his winter quarters.
+
+This amazing sensitiveness, resulting, I think, from the reception of a
+wordless message, was brought strongly home to me one day as I watched
+a flock of black mallards, forty or fifty of them, resting in the
+water-grass within a few yards of my hiding-place. A large hawk had
+appeared at intervals, circling over the marshes and occasionally over
+the pond; but, beyond turning an eye upward when he came too near, the
+ducks apparently paid no attention to him. He was their natural enemy;
+they had paid toll of their number to satisfy his hunger; but now,
+though plainly seen, he was no more regarded or feared than a
+dragon-fly buzzing among the reeds. Presently another hawk appeared in
+the distance, circling above the meadows. As a wider swing brought him
+over the pond a watchful duck uttered a single low quock! On the
+instant heads came from under wings; a few ducks shot into the open
+water for a look; others sprang aloft without looking, and the whole
+flock was away in a twinkling. I think the hawk did not see or suspect
+them till they rose in the air, for at the sudden commotion he swooped,
+checked himself when he saw that he was too late, and climbed upward
+where he could view the whole marsh again.
+
+Now these two hawks were of the same species, and to my eyes they were
+acting very much alike. One was hungry, on the lookout for food; the
+other was circling for his own amusement after having fed; and though
+the eyes of birds are untrustworthy in matters of such fine
+distinction, in some way these ducks instantly knew or felt the
+difference between the mood of one enemy and that of another. Likewise,
+when I have been watching deer in winter, I have seen a doe throw up
+her head, cry an alarm and bound away; and her action became
+comprehensible a few moments later when a pack of hunting wolves broke
+out of the cover. But I have watched deer when a pack of wolves that
+were not hunting passed by in plain sight, and beyond an occasional
+lift of the head for an alert glance the timid creatures showed no sign
+of alarm, or even of uneasiness, in presence of their terrible enemies.
+
+I say confidently that one wolf pack was hunting and the other not
+hunting because the northern timber-wolf naturally (that is, in a wild
+state and dealing with wild animals) hunts or kills only when he is
+hungry. I ran the trails of both packs, and one showed plainly that the
+wolves were in search of food; while the other said that the brutes
+were roaming the country idly, lazily; and when I ran the back trail of
+this second pack I found where they had just killed and eaten. The deer
+were not afraid of them because they were for the time quite harmless.
+
+At first I thought that these ducks and deer perceived the mood of
+their enemies in a simple way through the senses; that they could infer
+from the flight of a hawk or the trot of a wolf whether he were
+peaceable or dangerous; and at times this is probably the true
+explanation of the matter. The eyes of most birds and beasts, strangely
+dull to objects at rest, are instantly attracted to any unusual motion.
+If the motion be quiet, steady, rhythmical, they soon lose interest in
+it, unless it be accompanied by a display of bright color; but if the
+motion be erratic, or if it appear and disappear, as when an
+approaching animal hides or creeps, they keep sharp watch until they
+know what the motion means or until timidity prompts them to run away.
+Thus, chickens or ducks show alarm when a kite slants up into the air;
+they lose interest when the kite sits in the wind, and become alert
+again when it begins to dive or swoop. It is noticeable, also, that on
+a windy day all game-birds and animals are uncommonly wild and
+difficult of approach, partly because the constant motion of leaves or
+grass upsets them, and partly (in the case of animals) because their
+noses are at fault, the air messages being constantly broken up and
+confused. But such a “sensible” explanation, suitable as it may be for
+times or places, no longer satisfies me, and simply because it does not
+explain why on a quiet day game should be unconcerned in presence of
+one hawk or wolf, and take to instant flight on the appearance of
+another enemy of the same species.
+
+It should be noted here that these “fierce” birds and beasts are no
+more savage in killing grouse or deer than the grouse is savage in
+eating bugs, or the deer in seeking mushrooms at the proper season;
+that they simply seek their natural meat when they are hungry, and that
+they are not bloodthirsty or ferocious or wanton killers. Only men, and
+dogs trained or spoiled by men, are open to that charge. The birds and
+beasts of prey when not hungry (which is a large part of the time,
+since they feed but once a day or sometimes at longer intervals) live
+as peaceably as one could wish. After feeding they instinctively seek
+to be with their own kind and very rarely attempt to molest other
+creatures. At such times, when they are resting or playing or roving
+the woods, the smaller wood folk pay no more attention to them than to
+harmless fish-hawks or porcupines. [4] Repeatedly I have watched
+game-birds or animals when their enemies were in sight, and have
+wondered at their fearlessness. The interesting question is, how do
+they know, as they seemingly do, when the full-fed satisfaction of
+their enemy changes to a dangerous mood? Why, for example, are deer
+alarmed at the yelp of a she-wolf calling her cubs to the trail, and
+why do they feed confidently in the dusk-filled woods, as I have seen
+them do, when the air shivers and creeps to the clamor of a wolf pack
+baying like unleashed hounds in wild jubilation?
+
+I have no answer to the question, and no explanation except the one
+suggested by human experience: that the hunting animal, like the
+hunting man, probably sends something of his emotional excitement in a
+wave ahead of him, and that some animals are finely sensitive enough to
+receive this message and to be vaguely alarmed by it.
+
+
+
+The mating of animals, especially the calling of an unseen mate from a
+great distance, brings us face to face with the same problem, and
+perhaps also the same answer. Sometimes the mating call is addressed to
+the outer ear, as in the drumming of a cock-grouse or the whine of a
+cow-moose; but frequently a mate appears when, so far as we can hear,
+there is no audible cry to call him. How do the butterflies, for
+example, know when or where to seek their other halves? That their
+meeting is by chance or blunder or accident is a theory which hardly
+endures an hour’s observation. In the early spring I take a cocoon from
+a certain corner of shrubbery and carry it to my house, and there keep
+it till the end softens, when I put it into a box with a screened top
+and hang it out under the trees. Presently a gorgeous moth crawls out
+of the cocoon; and hardly has she begun to wave her wings to dry them
+when the air over the screen is brilliant with dancing wings, the wings
+of her would-be mates. And the thing is more puzzling to me because I
+have never found a cocoon of that kind in my immediate neighborhood;
+nor have I seen a single cecropia this season until the captive called
+them.
+
+How they find her so promptly is a problem that I cannot solve. It may
+be that the call is wholly physical or sensible, that some fine dust or
+aroma is sent forth on the air currents, and the sensitive nerves of
+other moths receive and respond to it; but it is still amazing that
+wind-blown creatures can follow an invisible air-trail through what
+must be to them a constant tempest and whirlwind of air currents, until
+they come unerringly to the one desired spot in a limitless universe. I
+have shown that pretty sight of dancing wings to many audiences, after
+predicting what would happen; and always they saw it with wonder, as if
+there were magic in it.
+
+The moth mystery may be dissolved by some such purely physical formula;
+but what physical sense will explain the fact that when I turned a
+modest hen-pheasant loose in the spring, in a region where my
+wide-ranging setter and I never discovered a pheasant, she was
+immediately joined by a gloriously colored mate, and soon there was a
+hidden nest and then young pheasants to watch? Most birds and beasts
+are questing widely in the mating season, and their senses seem to be
+more keen at this time, or more concentrated on a single object. On
+grounds of what we thoughtlessly call chance, therefore, they would be
+more apt to find mates when they are keenly looking for them; but
+giving them every possible chance in a wide region where the species is
+almost extinct, and then multiplying that chance a hundred times, I
+still find it hard to believe that the meeting of two rare animals is
+either accidental or the result of ordinary sense-perception. Out of
+several examples that occur to me, here are two which especially
+challenge the attention:
+
+One early spring a she-fox was caught in her den, some five miles from
+the village where I then harbored. She was carefully bagged, carried a
+few rods to an old wood road, placed in a wagon and driven over country
+highways to the village, where she was confined in a roomy pen in a
+man’s dooryard. A few nights later came a snowfall, and in the morning
+there were the tracks of a male fox heading straight to the vixen and
+making a path round about her pen. She was his mate, presumably, and
+when we found his tracks our first feeling of admiration at his
+boldness was soon replaced by the puzzling question of how he had found
+her so quickly and so surely. To answer that question, if possible, I
+followed his back trail.
+
+Now the trail of a fox in the wilderness, where he is sometimes hunted
+by wolves or other hungry prowlers, is a bewildering succession of
+twistings and crisscrosses; in a settled region, where his natural
+enemies are extinct, his trail is bolder, more straightforward, easier
+to read; and in either case you can quickly tell by the “signs” whether
+your fox is male or female, whether hunting or roaming, or hungry or
+satisfied. Also you can tell whether he is just “projeckin’ around,” as
+Uncle Remus says, or whether his mind is set on going somewhere. In the
+latter event he almost invariably follows runways, or fox roads, which
+are as well known to him as are footpaths and stream-crossings to a
+country lad. But the trail of this particular fox was different from
+any other that I ever followed. That he was a male and was “going
+somewhere” was evident enough; but he was not following runways or
+paying any attention to them. He left no signs at places where any
+ordinary dog-fox would surely have left them, and he was stopping to
+listen or to ward himself at uncommonly frequent intervals. So, running
+it backward, I read the story of his journey mile after mile, till the
+oncoming trail changed to the devious, rambling trot of a questing fox;
+and beyond that I had no interest in it.
+
+The place where the fox seemed to have found his bearings, or where he
+stopped his rambling to head straight for his mate, was some four miles
+distant from the captive in a bee-line. The course he took was entirely
+different from that taken by the man who brought the vixen home, thus
+excluding the theory that he followed the trail by scent; and the
+latter part of his way led through the outskirts of a village, where
+the track of a fox had not been seen for many years. From the distant
+hills he had come down through sheltering woods at a stealthy trot;
+across open pastures on the jump; over a bridge and along a highway,
+where he traveled behind a friendly stone wall; then very cautiously
+through lanes and garden fringes, where the scent of men and dogs met
+him at every turn; turning aside here for a difficulty or there for a
+danger, but holding his direction as true as if he followed a compass,
+till he came at last with delicate steps to where his mate was silently
+calling him. For except on the assumption that she called him, and with
+a cry that was soundless, I know not how to explain the fact that he
+found her in a place where neither he nor she had ever been before.
+
+It is possible, you may reason, that this was not his first visit; that
+unknown to us, venturing among his human and canine enemies, he had by
+a lucky chance stumbled upon his mate on an evening when the bare
+ground did not betray his secret to our eyes; and that for his next
+visit he had cunningly laid out a different trail through manifold
+dangers. It was the latter trail, made without doubt or question of
+what lay at the end of it, which I had followed in the telltale snow.
+
+That is a good armchair argument, but a very doubtful explanation of
+the fox action, since it calls for more reasoning power than we
+commonly find in a brute. Remember that this male fox was far away on
+his own affairs when his mate was captured, and he had no means of
+knowing where she had gone: he simply missed her from her accustomed
+haunts, and sought till he found her. Remember also that a male fox is
+never allowed to come near his mate’s den; that when she is heavy with
+young, as this vixen was when caught, he may join her of an evening and
+hunt for her, or bring her food that he has killed, but always, I
+think, at a distance from the place where she intends to bring forth
+her cubs. That the male, after missing his mate and yapping for her in
+vain through the woods, should at last seek her at the forbidden den,
+and there find the scent of men and conclude that they had taken her
+away; that he should follow the scent of a wagon-wheel over five miles
+of country roads, or else explore all the neighboring villages till he
+found what he sought; that he should then lay out a different trail,
+more secret and more reasonably safe, for his second visit,—all this is
+to me more ingenious, more unnatural and more incredible than that his
+mate should silently call him, as his mother had probably many times
+called him from the den when he was a cub, and that he should feel and
+answer her summons.
+
+Such reasoning is purely speculative, but there are certain facts which
+we must keep in mind if we are to explain the matter. The first, a
+general fact which is open to observation, is that it is fox nature at
+certain seasons to come to a captive; for what reason or with what
+self-forgetful motive it would be hard to say. I have known mother
+foxes and mother wolves to come where their cubs were imprisoned by
+men. I have heard a straight record of one male wolf that appeared at a
+ranch the second night after his wounded mate was captured by the
+ranchman. And I have seen a male fox come to the rescue of a female
+when she was driven by dogs and too heavy with young to make a long
+run, and wait beside her trail till the dogs appeared, and then lead
+them off after him while she made her escape. The second fact, which
+may imply some power of silent communication, is that when snow fell
+about the pen of this captive fox, a few nights after she was taken,
+there were the tracks to show that her mate already knew where she was.
+That he found and came to her in the midst of his enemies may be quite
+as significant as how he found her, by way of giving a new direction or
+interest to our skin-and-bones study of natural history.
+
+In this first example the fox was perhaps moved by the mating impulse,
+which sharpened his wit and encouraged his will; but at times a wild
+creature may seek and find his mate when no such “call of the blood”
+urges him, when he comes with his life in his hand in response to some
+finer or nobler motive, something perhaps akin to loyalty, which is the
+sum of all virtues. Witness the following:
+
+A friend of mine was hunting one October day when his shot wing-tipped
+a quail, apparently the old female of the flock, which his dog caught
+and brought to him almost uninjured. What to do was the next question.
+It is easy, because thoughtless, to cut down a bird in swift flight;
+but when the little thing nestles down in your hand or tries to hide
+under your fingers; when you can feel its rapid heart-beat, and its
+eyes are big and wondrous bright,—well, then some hunters bite the
+head, and some wring the neck, and some would for the moment as lief be
+shot as to do either. So to avoid the difficulty my friend put the
+quail carefully away in a pocket of his hunting-coat, and brought her
+home with some vague idea of taming her, and some dream of trapping a
+mate in the spring and perhaps raising some little bob-whites of his
+own. At night he put the captive into a coop just inside the barn
+window, which was open wide enough to admit air but not a prowling cat;
+for he was already beginning to learn that a quail is a most lovable
+little pet, and he was bound that she should not again be hurt or
+frightened.
+
+Before sunrise next morning he heard low, eager whistlings in the yard;
+and there was another quail, a male bob-white, where never one was seen
+before nor since. He was perched warily on the window-sill of the barn,
+looking in at his captive mate, telling her in the softest of quail
+tones (for there were enemies all about) that he had found her and was
+glad; while from within the barn came a soft piping and gurgling which
+seemed to speak welcome and reassurance. The opening of a door
+frightened him; he buzzed away to the orchard, and presently from an
+apple-tree came the exquisite quoi-lee! quoi-lee! the assembly-call of
+the bob-white family.
+
+The first quail had been caught miles away from the man’s house; there
+were no other birds of her own kind within hearing distance, so far as
+my friend and his dog ever discovered, and it was not the mating-time,
+when quail are questing widely. By a process of elimination, therefore,
+one reaches the conclusion that the male bird was, in all probability,
+the father of the flock over which the captive presided; that he had
+helped to raise the young birds, as quail commonly do; that he had
+stood by his family all summer in loyal bob-white fashion, and that he
+went out to seek his vanished mate when she failed to answer his
+calling.
+
+All that seems clear enough, and in perfect accord with quail habits;
+but when you ask, “How did he find her?” there is no answer except the
+meaningless word “chance” or a frank admission of our original premise:
+that wild birds and beasts all exercise a measure of that mysterious
+telepathic power which reappears now and then in some sensitive man or
+woman. It may be for the wood folk that “There is no speech nor
+language: their voice is not heard,” as the Psalmist wrote of the
+communing day and night; but they certainly communicate in some way,
+and the longer one studies them the more does it appear that part of
+their “talk” is of a finer character than that which our ears can hear.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO KNOW THE WOOD FOLK
+
+
+VII
+
+ON GETTING ACQUAINTED
+
+
+To know birds and beasts may be a greater or a lesser triumph than to
+know ornithology or zoölogy. That is a question of taste or
+temperament, the only certainty being that the two classes of subjects
+are altogether different. The latter deals with external matters, with
+form, classification, generalities. Its materials are books, specimens,
+museums, one as dead or desiccate as another; and because it is limited
+and exact, you can memorize its outlines in a few days, or become in a
+few years an authority in the science.
+
+The former subject, of birds and beasts, deals with an endless and
+fascinating mystery. Its materials are living and joyous individuals,
+among whom are no classes or species, concerning whom there can be no
+“authority”; and when, after a lifetime of study, you have made a small
+beginning of knowledge, you find that, like All Gaul of misty memory,
+it may be divided into three parts.
+
+One part is observation, which is a simple matter of the eye. Another
+is sympathy, which belongs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild
+creatures, as with civilized folk, one learns to appreciate De
+Quincey’s rule of criticism, “Not to sympathize is not to understand.”
+A third part, more rare and variable, may come from that penetrating
+but indescribable quality which we call a gift. A few men have it; the
+animals instinctively trust them, and they understand animals without
+knowing how they understand. The rest, lacking it, must struggle
+against a handicap to learn, substituting the slow wisdom of experience
+for the quick insight of the gift. It is for the latter chiefly that I
+write these wood notes.
+
+One word more by way of preface, to express the conviction that you can
+learn nothing worth knowing about birds or beasts so long as you seek
+them with a gun in your hand. On that road you shall find only common
+dust, and at the end of it a valley of dry bones. Whether you carry the
+gun frankly for sport, or delude yourself with the notion that you can
+add to natural history by collecting more skins or skulls, you have
+unconsciously placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death above
+the beautiful mystery of life. So must you estrange both the animal and
+yourself, making it impossible for you to meet on any common ground of
+understanding. And now for our lessons:
+
+
+
+If I were to formulate rules for a subject which can never be learned
+by the book, I might say that there are three things you should know,
+and another you must do, if you expect to gain any intimate knowledge
+of the wood folk, or even to approach them near enough for fair and
+leisurely observation.
+
+The first thing to know is that natural creatures, though instinctively
+shy or timid, are not wildly governed by fears and terrors, as we have
+been misinformed from our youth up. The “reign of terror” is another of
+those pet scientific delusions, like the “struggle for existence,” for
+which there is no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the word
+is an exclusively human possession, or affliction; it is a physical and
+moral poison, as artificial as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue
+of being natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything remotely
+resembling our fear, a state of mind arising from a highly developed
+imagination which enables us to picture events before they happen, is
+ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an egg. The natural
+timidity of all wild creatures is a protective and wholesome instinct,
+radically different from the fear which makes cowards of men who have
+learned to trace causes and to anticipate consequences.
+
+So much for the mental analysis; and your eyes emphasize the same
+conclusion when you look frankly upon the natural world. The very
+attitude or visible expression of birds or beasts when you meet them in
+their native woods, feeding, playing, resting, seeking their mates, or
+roving freely with their little ones (all pleasurable matters,
+constituting nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is enough in
+itself to refute the absurd notion of a general reign of terror in
+nature. If you are wise, therefore, you will get rid of that prejudice,
+or at least hold it in abeyance till the animals themselves teach you
+how senseless it is. To go out obsessed with the notion of fear is to
+blind your eyes to the great comedy of the woods.
+
+The second thing to know, and to remember when you go forth to see, is
+that sensitive creatures dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when
+they find a pair of eyes intently fixed upon them. You yourself retain
+something of this ancient animal inheritance, it seems, since there is
+nothing which more surely excites alarm if you are timid, or challenge
+if you are well balanced, or anger if you have a fighting spirit, than
+to have a stranger watching your every move while you go about your
+lawful affairs. The fact that you cannot word a reason for your alarm
+or challenge or anger makes you all the more certain that you have an
+unanswerable reason; which is your inborn right to be let alone.
+
+This natural and inalienable right (which society curbs for its own
+protection, and reform societies trample on for their peculiar
+pleasure) may help you to understand why the animal becomes alarmed
+when he finds you watching him closely. He desires above all things
+else, above his dinner even, to be let alone; and your eye may as
+surely disturb his peace, his self-possession, his sense of security,
+as any gun you may shoot at him or any fire you may kindle in his
+fragrant domain.
+
+You have but to think a moment in order to understand why even your
+look may be too disturbing. When a beast of prey sees a buck that he
+wants to catch, what is his invariable mode of procedure? First he
+hides, then he creeps or skulks or waits, all the while keeping his
+eyes fastened upon his victim, watching every move with fierce
+intensity till the moment comes to spring. It follows, naturally
+enough, that when the same beast of prey finds other eyes fixed upon
+himself, he knows well what the look means, that a rush will swiftly
+follow; and he anticipates the rush by taking to his heels. Or the
+buck, having once escaped the charge of a hunting beast, will remember
+his experience the next time he finds himself an object of scrutiny,
+and will flee from it as from any other discomfort.
+
+Whether this action is the result of instinctive or deductive knowledge
+is here of no consequence: let the psychologists pick a bone over it.
+Since we have in our heads a strong aversion to being observed too
+closely, we are probably facing an instinct, which is stronger in the
+brute than in the man; but it is the fact, not the explanation thereof,
+which is important. The simple fact is, that wild birds and beasts will
+not endure watching; and you begin to sympathize with their notion when
+you mark the eyes of a stalking cat, with their terrible fire just
+before she springs. There is always more or less of that fire in a
+watchful eye; you may see it glow or blaze under a man’s narrowed lids
+before he takes quick action; and it is the kindling of that dangerous
+light which a sensitive creature expects and avoids when he finds you
+watching him.
+
+Did you ever follow an old cock-partridge in the woods with intent to
+kill him? If so, you have a living picture of the truth I have
+explained theoretically. Near our towns the partridge (ruffed grouse)
+is very wild, taking wing at your approach; but in the deep woods he is
+almost fearless. Even when you stumble into a flock of the birds,
+frightening them out of their calm, they are apt to flit into the trees
+and remain absolutely motionless. They are then hard to find, so well
+do they blend with their background; and if they are young birds, they
+will hold still after you discover them. Since they were helpless
+chicks they have trusted to quietness to conceal them; it serves them
+very well, much better than running away from stronger enemies; and the
+habit is strong upon them, as upon young ducks and other game-birds
+before they have learned to trust their wings. But when you stumble
+upon an old cock-grouse you meet a bird that has added experience to
+instinct, and that knows when to move as well as when to sit still. He
+dodges out of sight as you raise your rifle; as you follow him he
+bursts away on whirring wings and slants up into a tree in a distant
+part of the wood. Marking where he lights, you try to find him,
+cat-footing around his perch, peering into every tree-top, putting a
+“crik” in the back of your neck. For a half-hour, it may be, you search
+for him in vain; suddenly there he is, and—b’r-r-r-r! he is gone. The
+odd thing is that he sits still so long as you cannot find him; not a
+feather stirs or a foot shifts or an eyelid blinks even when your
+glance roves blindly over him; you may give him up and go away, leaving
+him motionless; but the instant you see him he seems to know it, and in
+that instant he is off. This is not a single or an accidental but a
+typical experience; any woodsman who has hunted ruffed grouse with a
+rifle will smile as he tells you, “That’s true; but I can’t explain
+it.”
+
+A third bit of woods lore, of which we shall presently make good use,
+is that natural birds and animals have a lively interest in every new
+or strange thing they meet. Far from being occupied in a constant
+struggle for existence, as the books misinform us, their lives are full
+of leisure; they have plentiful hours for rest or play or roving, and
+in these idle times they get most of their fun out of life by indulging
+their curiosity. I fancy that in this respect, also, most people are
+still natural creatures, seeing that men or women in a crowd are as
+easily set to stretching their necks as any flock of ducks or band of
+caribou.
+
+So strong is the animal’s inquisitive instinct (for it surely is an
+instinct, the basis of all education, and without it we should be
+fools, learning nothing) that he will readily give over his play or
+even his feeding to investigate any new thing which catches his
+attention. I speak now not of fearsome things, which may properly alarm
+the wood folk, but of pretty or harmless or attractive things, such as
+the repeated flash of a looking-glass or the rhythmic swing of a
+handkerchief or a whistled tune, which commonly bring wild creatures
+nearer with forward-set ears and eyes with questions in them. In a
+word, so far as I have observed birds and beasts, their first or
+natural attitude toward every new object, unless it be raising fearful
+smells or moving toward them with hostile intent, is invariably one of
+curiosity rather than of fear.
+
+One proof of this universal trait, to me, is that when I approach wild
+animals carelessly they often run away; but of the hundreds that have
+approached me when I was quiet in the woods, every one without
+exception showed plainly by his action that he was keen to find out who
+or what I might be. Young animals are more inquisitive than old, having
+everything to learn, and they are easily attracted; but age cannot
+stale the wonder of the world for them, and I have never chanced to
+meet an old doe, no, nor a tough old bull moose, that did not come near
+to question me if the chance were given. Of the larger wood folk
+Mooween the bear is perhaps the least inquisitive; yet once an old bear
+came so close to me, his eyes a question and his nose an exclamation
+point, that I could have touched him before his curiosity was
+satisfied; and several times, when I have been watching the
+berry-fields, a bear and her cubs have noticed some slight motion of
+mine and have left their feast of blueberries to approach rather too
+near for my comfort. At close quarters an old she-bear is a little
+uncertain. Commonly she runs away in sudden panic; but should you get
+between her and her cub, and the piggish little fellow squeal out as if
+frightened or hurt, she may fly into a fury and become dangerous to a
+man unarmed.
+
+The obvious thing to do, in view of what has been learned, is to hold
+physically and mentally still when you meet a wild animal, and so take
+advantage of his curiosity. That is very easy when he happens to find
+you at rest, for then he is bound to find out something about you
+before he goes; but even when he catches you afoot you may still have a
+fair chance if you stop in your tracks and move no muscle while he is
+looking. Remember that so long as you are motionless you puzzle him;
+that you should advance only when his head is turned away, and that you
+should never move directly at any animal, but to one side, as if you
+would give him plenty of room in passing. If you must change your
+position or attitude while he is looking, move gently and very slowly,
+avoiding every appearance of haste or nervousness. If he vanishes after
+one keen look, be sure he is a veteran that has seen men before, and
+bide still where you are. The chances are ten to one that no sooner
+does he think himself hidden than he will turn to have another look at
+you. It is always in your favor, since you have the better eyes, that
+an animal has the habit of concealment, and so long as you pretend not
+to see him he is very apt to think himself unseen.
+
+Such a method applies particularly well to all members of the deer
+family, with their insatiable curiosity; but it serves almost as well
+with beasts of prey, which may be so surprised by meeting a motionless
+man that they will often “point” him in a way to suggest a setter
+pointing a woodcock. We think of the fox, for example, as the most
+cunning of animals; like the dolls’ dressmaker in Our Mutual Friend, he
+seems to be saying, “Oh, I know your tricks and your manners”; yet on a
+good tracking-snow I have trailed many foxes to their day-beds, and
+have found that with few exceptions they act in the same half-puzzled,
+half-inquisitive way. And this is the fashion of it:
+
+Looking far ahead on the dainty trail you suddenly catch a glimpse of
+orange color, very warm against the cold whiteness of the snow, which
+tells you where Eleemos the sly one, as Simmo calls him, is curled on a
+warm rock or stump with the winter sunshine fair upon him. Then you
+must leave the trail, as if you were not following it, and advance on
+noiseless feet till the fox raises his head, when you must “freeze” in
+your tracks. If he is a tramp fox (that is, one which has come hunting
+here out of his own territory) or a veteran that has already seen too
+much of men and their devices, he will dodge out of sight and be seen
+no more; but if he is an ordinary young fox, especially a cub
+weathering his first winter, he will almost certainly investigate that
+odd motionless object which was not there when he went to sleep. After
+“pointing” you a moment he slips into the nearest cover, not turning
+his head in your direction, but watching you keenly out of the corners
+of his yellow eyes. When he thinks himself hidden from your sight he
+circles to get your wind; and on this side or that you will have two or
+three good glimpses of him before he floats away—or seems to, so
+lightly does he run—to hunt up another day-bed. Your last view of him
+shows a slyly inquisitive little beast, perfectly self-possessed; but
+as he disappears you notice a nervous, quivering, fluttering motion of
+his great brush, which gives him away as a tail betrays a dog, and
+which says that Eleemos is greatly excited or puzzled over something.
+
+Better than roaming noisily through the woods in search of game is to
+sit still and let the game come to you—an arrangement which puts you at
+your ease, and at the same time encourages the animal to indulge his
+curiosity without alarm. You may not see so many birds or beasts in
+this way, but some of them you shall see much more intimately; and a
+single inquisitive jay may teach you more of nature than all the bird
+books in the world, as I have learned more of Latin humanity from
+Angelo, who polishes my shoes, than from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of
+the Roman Empire. Very often, if you hold perfectly still, a wild
+animal will pass down the runway close at hand without even seeing you,
+and you must draw his attention by a chirp or a slight motion. Then,
+when he whirls upon you in astonishment, his eyes saying that he was
+never so surprised in his life, observe him casually as it were,
+veiling your interest and never staring at him as if he were a wild or
+strange beast, but greeting him rather as one you have long known.
+
+At such a moment quietness is the best medicine—quietness and friendly
+eyes. If the animal wavers, a low song or a whistled tune may or may
+not be helpful; it depends entirely on the tune. You are to keep
+physically quiet, because any sudden motion will alarm the sensitive
+creature, so near is he to the unknown; and mentally quiet, because
+excitement is as contagious as fear or measles, or any other disease of
+mind or body. When I am alone in the woods wild animals are rarely hard
+to approach, and when I am sitting quietly by a runway they show no
+fear of me whatever, drawing near with questioning eyes or moving away
+reluctantly; but when I take another with me, especially one who grows
+excited in the presence of big game, the same animals appear
+suspicious, uneasy, and end by bolting away as if we had frightened
+them.
+
+One day there came to my camp a friend who was eager to see a deer at
+close range, but who was doubtful of my assurance that animals could
+neither see nor smell him if he knew how to hold still. When I promised
+him a deer at ten feet he jumped for his camera, saying that in such an
+incredible event he would get what he had always wanted, a picture of
+the graceful creature against a background of his native woods, in soft
+light and shadow instead of the glaring black-and-white of a
+flashlight. At that disturbing proposition all his doubts moved into
+me, who have always found camera folk a fidgety folk. What with their
+fussing and focusing and everlasting uneasiness over distance or time
+or shutter, or something else which is never right and ready, they are
+sure to bedevil any wild creature before he comes within speaking
+distance; so I took my friend and his camera along without faith,
+hoping for the best.
+
+Our stand was a hardwood ridge where deer often passed on their way to
+the lake, and we had been sitting there hardly an hour when I saw a
+young spikebuck coming down the runway. The next moment there was a
+gasping “Oh, there’s a deer!” from the man who had been warned to keep
+mentally still. Then began the inevitable tinkering with the camera,
+which had been thrice prepared and was still as unready as all its
+kind. More than once I had sat in that precise spot while deer passed
+at a distance of three or four yards without noticing me; but now the
+little buck caught an uneasy motion and halted with head high and eyes
+flashing. If ever there was a chance for a wonderful picture, he
+offered it; but he did not like the focusing, or whatever it was, and
+after endless delay the camera clicked on a white flag bobbing among
+the shadows, where it looked in the negative like a smear of sunlight.
+
+
+
+The camera reminds me of another way of approaching deer, a way often
+followed by summer campers; namely, by chasing the swimming animal in a
+canoe. I have but one word to say of such a method, and that is, Don’t!
+When a deer is crossing broad water you can get as close to him as you
+will; you can take a grip on him and let him tow your canoe, as
+thoughtless people sometimes do, encouraged by their guides; but I
+suggest that it would be much better to shoot the creature and have
+done with it.
+
+A deer’s powers are very delicately balanced; he is nervous, high
+strung, easily upset. Even on land, where he can distance you in a
+moment, he begins to worry if he finds you holding steadily to his
+trail; and I have known a young deer to become so flustered after he
+had been jumped and followed a few times that he began to act in most
+erratic fashion, and was very easily approached. When you chase him in
+the water, and he finds that he cannot get away from you, he may give
+up and drown, as a rabbit submits without a struggle when a weasel
+rises in front of him; but a vigorous deer is more apt to become highly
+excited, to struggle wildly, to waste ten times as much energy as would
+keep him afloat, to jump his heart action at a dangerous rate; and then
+a very little more will finish him as surely as a bullet in the brain.
+
+Twice have I seen deer thus killed by thoughtless campers, the last
+victim being a splendid buck full grown. Two men saw him swimming an
+arm of Moosehead Lake, and launched a canoe with no unkinder purpose
+than to turn him back to shore, so that a party of sportsmen there
+might get a picture of him. The buck labored mightily; but the paddles
+were swift, and wherever he turned the danger appeared close in front
+of him. Suddenly he rose in the water, pawing the air, and heaved over
+on his side. When the canoe reached him he was dead; and the surprising
+thing is that dissection revealed no ruptured blood-vessel nor any
+other visible cause of his death. It was probably a matter of heart
+paralysis. Such an ending was unusual, I know; but undoubtedly many of
+these overwrought animals reach shore exhausted, spent to the limit,
+and lie down in the first good cover, never to rise again.
+
+Moose and caribou are stronger swimmers than deer, and of tougher
+fiber; but it is still dangerous, I think, to chase them in the water.
+Once I saw a canoe following close behind a cow and a calf moose, the
+canoeists yelling wildly to hurry up the pace. Had they thought to look
+once into the eyes of the struggling brutes, they might have learned
+something which they ought to know. As the calf lagged farther and
+farther behind, the mother turned to come between him and the canoe,
+and remained there trying to urge and push the little fellow along. So
+they reached shallow water at last, found their footing, and plunged
+into the cover. The canoe turned away, and no doubt the incident was
+soon forgotten. I never saw the canoemen again, but I saw one of the
+moose. A few days later, in passing through the woods on that side of
+the lake, I found the calf stretched out dead where he had fallen, not
+fifty yards from the water’s edge.
+
+Perhaps another “don’t” should here be memorized for the happy occasion
+when you find a fawn or a little cub in the woods, and are moved most
+kindly to pet him. If the mother is half-tame, or has lived near a
+clearing long enough to lose distrust of the man-scent, it may do no
+harm to treat her fawn or cub as you would a puppy; but to handle any
+wild little creature is to do him an injury. Until a fawn is strong
+enough to travel the rough country in which he was born, the doe often
+leaves him hidden in the woods, where he lies so close and still that
+you may pass without seeing him. Once you discover him, however, and he
+knows that he is seen, his beautiful eyes begin to question you with a
+great wonder. He has no fear of you whatever (this while he is very
+young, or before he begins to follow his mother); he will sometimes
+follow you when you go away, and he is such a lovable creature, so
+innocent and so appealing, that it is hard to keep your hands from him.
+Let him sniff your palm if he will, or lick it with his rough tongue
+for the faint taste of salt; but as you value his life don’t pet him or
+leave the scent of you on his delicate skin. A wild mother knows her
+own by the sense of smell chiefly; if she finds the startling man-scent
+where she expected a familiar odor, she becomes instantly alarmed, and
+then the little one is a stranger to her or a source of violent anger.
+
+Once, before I learned better than to handle any helpless cub, I saw a
+doe drive her own fawn roughly away from her, out of my sight and
+hearing. I had petted the fawn a little (a very little, I am glad to
+remember) and looked with wonder on the mother’s anger, not
+understanding it till some time later, when I learned of a similar
+incident with a sadder ending. Not far from my camp a sportsman with
+his guide found a fawn hidden near the stream where they were fishing,
+and being completely won by the beautiful innocent, as most men are,
+they petted him to their hearts’ content. When an old doe, the mother
+presumably, appeared heading in their direction they thoughtfully
+withdrew, hiding at a distance to watch the family reunion. The doe
+seemed to hasten her steps when she saw that the fawn was on his feet,
+instead of lying close where she had left him; but when near him she
+suddenly stiffened, with the hair bristling on her neck. Two or three
+times she thrust out her nose, only to back away, and once she raised
+the harsh alarm-cry that a doe utters when she smells danger. Then, as
+the little fellow trotted up to her on his wabbly legs, she leaped upon
+him in fury and trampled him to death.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ON KEEPING STILL
+
+
+To return to our first lesson, of quietude: it was impressed upon me
+unconsciously, like most good lessons, before I had any thought that I
+was learning the true way of the woods. The teacher was Nature herself
+(she seldom fails to quiet boy or man if left alone with him), and the
+school-room was a lonely berry-pasture surrounded by pine and hardwood
+forests. The berry-pickers, a happy and carefree lot, often let me go
+with them while I was yet too small to find my way among the tall
+swamp-blueberry bushes, and would leave me under a tree at the edge of
+the woods, with an armful of berry-laden branches to keep me busy while
+they wandered far away in search of the best picking. Sitting there in
+the breathing solitude, occupied with the task of filling my tin cup
+with berries and well content with my lot (for the woods always had a
+fascination for me, and seemed most friendly when I was alone), I would
+presently “feel” that something was watching me. There was never any
+suggestion of fear in the impression, only an awakening to the fact
+that I was not alone, that some living thing was near me. Then, as I
+looked up expectantly, I would almost always find a bird slipping
+noiselessly through the branches overhead, or a beastie creeping
+through the cover at my side; and in his bright eyes, his shy approach,
+his withdrawal to appear in another spot, I read plainly enough that he
+was asking who I was or what I was doing there. And by a whistled tune
+or a drumming on my cup, or by flashing a sunbeam into his eyes from a
+pocket glass, I always tried to hold him as long as I could.
+
+This curious sense or feeling of being watched, by the way, is very
+real in some men, who do not regard it as a matter of chance or
+imagination. I have known of two elaborate courses of “laboratory”
+experiments which aimed to determine how far such a feeling is
+trustworthy, and both resulted in a neutral or fifty-fifty conclusion;
+but I wonder, if the experiments had been tried on Indians or natural
+men under natural conditions, whether the result might not have been
+quite different. The fact that the first fifty men you meet get lost or
+turned around in a trackless forest is significant for the fifty, and
+for the vast majority of others; but it means nothing to the one
+bushman who can go where he will without thought or possibility of
+being lost, because of his sure sense of direction.
+
+So, possibly, with this feeling of being watched: it may be too
+intangible for experiment, or even for definition. Many times since
+childhood when I have been alone in the big woods, fishing or holding
+vigil by a wilderness lake, I have the feeling, at times vaguely and
+again definitely, that strange eyes were upon me. Occasionally, it is
+true, I have found nothing on looking around, either because no animal
+was there or because he was too well hidden to be seen; but much more
+often the feeling proved true to fact—so often, indeed, that I soon
+came to trust it without doubt or question, as Simmo my Indian still
+does, and a few other woodsmen I have known. It is possible that one’s
+ears or nose may account for the feeling; that some faint sound or odor
+may make itself felt so faintly that one has the impression of life
+without knowing through what channel the impression is received. Of
+that I am not at all sure; at the moment it seems that some extra sense
+is at work, more subtle than smell or hearing; and, whether rightly or
+wrongly, it is apparently associated with the penetrating stare of an
+animal’s eyes on your back.
+
+To quote but a single incident, out of several that come to my memory:
+I was once sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, wholly intent on
+following the antics of a bull moose I had called into the open. He was
+on the other side of a small bay, ranging up and down, listening,
+threshing the bushes with his antlers, blowing his penny-trumpet at
+intervals,—in a dozen impatient ways showing what a young and foolish
+moose he was. A veteran would have kept to the cover till he had
+located what he came for. I had ceased my bellowing when the bull first
+answered, had been thrilled by his rush through the woods, had cheered
+him silently when he burst into the open, grunting and challenging like
+a champion; now I was quietly enjoying his bewilderment at not finding
+the tantalizing cow he had just heard calling. He did not see or
+suspect me; I had the comedy all to myself, and was keenly interested
+to know how he would act when he rounded the bay, as he certainly
+would, and found me sitting in his path. Because he was big and
+truculent and a fool, I did not know what to expect; my canoe floated
+ready against the outer end of a stranded log, where a push would send
+it and me into deep water. I mention these details simply to show where
+my thoughts were.
+
+As I watched the play in the hushed twilight, suddenly came the feeling
+that something was watching me. The bull had started around the bay in
+my direction; possibly his eyes had picked me out—but no, he was in
+plain sight, and the feeling is always associated with something
+unseen. Without changing position I looked carefully all about,
+searching the lake and especially the woods, which were already in deep
+shadow. Finding no bird or beast, no motion, nothing alarming, I turned
+to question the bull, who had halted to sound his ridiculous trumpet.
+He was perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. He had not yet seen me; I had
+no fear of him, no anxiety whatever; yet again came the feeling, this
+time insistent, compelling, as if some one had touched me and said,
+“Get away!” I did so promptly, jumping to my feet; and out of a fir
+thicket behind me charged another bull that I had not dreamed of
+calling.
+
+By his size, his antlers, his fierce grunting, I recognized this brute
+on the instant. I had met him before, once on a trail, once on the lake
+shore, and had given him all the room he wanted. He was a grizzled old
+bull, morose and ugly, that seemed to have lost his native fear of
+man—from a galling wound, perhaps, or from living an outcast life by
+himself. He was a little crazy, I judged. That he was dangerous I knew
+from the fact that he had previously made an unprovoked attack upon my
+Indian. He, too, had heard the call; had approached it from behind as
+stealthily as a cat, and had no doubt watched me, puzzled by my
+stillness, till my first decided motion brought him out on the jump.
+But I am wandering away from the small boy getting his first lessons in
+the woods, and learning that the important thing is to hold perfectly
+still.
+
+Later, when eight or nine years old, I went alone day after summer day
+to the wild berry-pastures. When my big pail would hold no more, I
+would make a bowl by bashing in the top of my hat, and fill it to the
+brim with luscious blueberries. These with a generous slice of bread
+made an excellent lunch, which I always ate within sight of a bird’s
+nest, or the den of a fox, or some other abode of life that I had
+discovered in the woods. And again, as I sat quiet in the solitude, the
+birds and small animals might be led by curiosity to approach as
+fearlessly as when I was too small to harm them. Now a vixen, finding
+me too near her den and cubs, would squall at me impatiently, like a
+little yellow dog with a cat’s voice; or again, a brooding bird that
+objected to my scrutiny would first turn her tail to me, and presently
+come round again, and finally get mad and flutter about my head,
+scolding loudly to chivvy me away. So it often happened that one had
+nearer or happier or more illuminating glimpses of wild life in that
+small hour of rest than would be possible in a month of roaming the
+woods with gun or collecting-box.
+
+Once as I was eating my lunch under the pines, meanwhile watching a den
+I had found to see what might come out of it, a crow sailed in on
+noiseless wings and lit so near me that I hardly dared wink for fear he
+would notice the motion. My first thought was that he was nest-robbing
+(a crow is very discreet about that business), but he appeared rather
+to be listening, cocking his head this way or that; and from a lazy
+hawing in the distance I concluded he was satisfying himself that his
+flock was occupied elsewhere and that he was quite alone. Presently he
+hitched along the branch on which he stood and glided off to the crotch
+of a pine-tree, where he began to uncover what was hidden under a mat
+of brown needles. The first thing he took out was a piece of glass,
+which sparkled with rainbow colors in a stray glint of sunshine. Then
+came a bit of quartz with more sparkles, a shell, a silvery buckle, and
+some other glistening objects which I could not make out. He turned his
+treasures over and over, all the while croaking to himself in a pleased
+kind of way; then he put them all back, covered them again with
+needles, and slipped away without a sound. Having kept tame crows, I
+knew that they are forever stealing and hiding whatever bright objects
+they find about the house; and here in the pine woods was a thing to
+indicate that wild crows, perhaps all of them, have the same covetous
+habit.
+
+Another day, a heavenly day when the budding woods were vocal and life
+stirred joyously in every thicket, I took a jews’-harp from my pocket
+and began to twang it idly. No, there was nothing premeditated in the
+act. I had been roving widely, following the winds or the bird-calls
+till a sunny opening invited me to rest, and had then fingered the
+music-maker with no more purpose than the poet’s boy, who “whistled as
+he went for want of thought.” The rhythmic, nasal twanging was a sound
+never heard in that place before or since, I think, and the first to
+come hurriedly to investigate was a bright-colored warbler, whose name
+I did not know; nor did I care to know it, feeling sure that by some
+note or sign he would presently suggest a name for himself, which would
+please me better than the barbarous jargon I might find in a bird-book.
+The alert little fellow lit on a branch within three feet of my face,
+turning his head so as to view me with one eye or the other when I kept
+quiet, or chirping his indignation when I twanged the jews’-harp. Next
+came a jay, officious as the town constable; then more birds, half
+concealing their curiosity under gentle manners; and a squirrel who had
+no manners at all, scolding everybody and scurrying about in a fashion
+which seemed dangerous to his excited head.
+
+As I watched this little assembly, which seemed to be asking, “What’s
+up? What’s up?” the meaning of it suddenly dawned on me like a
+surprising discovery. When I entered the opening I knew simply that
+birds or beasts would draw near if they found me quiet; before I left
+it I had found the explanation: that all the wood folk are intensely
+curious, as curious as so many human gossips, but without any of their
+malice; that by inner compulsion they are drawn to any strange sight or
+sound, as a crowd collects when a man cuts a caper or throws a fit or
+raises a whoop or looks up into the air, or does anything else out of
+the ordinary. When you appear in the quiet woods every bird or beast
+within sight or hearing is agog to know about you; they are like the
+Nantucket-Islanders, who named their one public hack the “Who’s Come?”
+Because you are a stranger, and what you do is none of their business,
+they are all the more interested in you and your doings; you come to
+them with all the charm of the unknown, the unexpected; and they will
+gratify their curiosity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you
+know how to stimulate or play upon it and to hold still while enjoying
+it.
+
+All that is natural enough, as natural as life; but it is not written
+in any book of natural history, and it came to me that day as a
+wonderful discovery. It suggested at once the right way to study birds
+or beasts, as living creatures; it has since led to many a fascinating
+glimpse of the wood-folk comedy, and to a lifelong pleasure which is
+too elusive to be set down in words. At the bottom of it, I suppose, is
+the fact that in every wild or natural creature is something, at once
+mysterious and familiar, which appeals powerfully to your interest or
+sympathy, as if you saw a faint shadow of your other self, or caught a
+fleeting memory of that vanished time when you lived in a child’s world
+of wonder and delight.
+
+From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds and animals in a child’s
+impersonal way; which, strangely enough, ascribes personality to every
+living thing, yes, and honors it. These inquisitive little rangers of
+the wood or the berry-pasture, shy and exquisitely alert, were all
+individuals like myself, each one seeking the joy of life in his own
+happy way. My only regret was that I was too clumsy, too obtrusive, too
+ignorant of the way of the wild, and so frightened many a timid bird or
+beast that I would gladly have known.
+
+All this, too, is perfectly natural; the instinctive attitude of a
+child, as of an animal, is one of curiosity rather than of fear or
+destruction. If left to his natural instincts, a child meets every
+living creature with a mixture of shyness or timidity and bright
+interest; he becomes an enemy of the wild, learning to frighten and
+harry and kill, not from nature but from the evil example of his
+elders. I could prove that beyond a peradventure, I think, if this were
+the place; but there is no need of any man’s demonstration. Go yourself
+to the big woods at twilight, leaving custom behind you; go alone and
+unarmed; hear that rustle of leaves, that tread of soft feet which
+brings you to an instant halt; see that strange beast which glides out
+into the trail and turns to look at you with luminous eyes. Then
+quickly examine your own mental state, and you will know the truth of a
+man’s natural or instinctive attitude toward the mystery of life.
+
+Unfortunately the wild birds and beasts near our home have learned that
+man is unnatural, a creature to be feared, and their curiosity has
+given place to another motive. The young still display their natural
+bent freely; but the old have heard too many of our guns, have been too
+often disturbed by our meddlesome dogs or worthless cats, have suffered
+too much at the hands of outrageous egg-collectors or skin-collectors
+to be any longer drawn to us when we go afield. As you go farther away
+from civilization it becomes easier to play on the animals’ native
+curiosity; in the far North or the remote jungle, or wherever man is
+happily unknown, they still come fearlessly to investigate you, or to
+stand quiet, like the ptarmigan, watching with innocent eyes as you
+pass them by. In the intermediate regions, which are harried by
+sportsmen for a brief period in the autumn and then left to a long
+solitude, the animals are wild or tame according to season; and it has
+seemed to me, not always but on occasions, that in some subtle way they
+distinguish between man and man, taking alarm at the first sniff of a
+hunter, but stopping to show their interest in a harmless woods-rover.
+
+This last is a mere theory, to be sure, and to some it may appear a
+fanciful one; but it rests, be assured, upon repeated experience. Thus,
+I came once at evening to a camp of hunters who were in a sorry plight.
+They were in a good deer country, and had counted largely on venison to
+supply their table; but for more than a week they had tasted no meat,
+and they were very hungry. The deer were wild as hawks, they assured
+me. They had hunted every day; but because of the game’s wildness and
+the dry weather, which made the leaves rustle loudly underfoot, it had
+proved impossible to approach near enough for a shot—all of which made
+me think that, if you want to see game, you should leave your gun at
+home. I had met about a dozen deer that day; most of them were within
+easy range, and a few of them stood with questioning eyes while a man
+might have made ready his camera and taken a picture of them.
+
+The very next morning, and within a mile of the hunters’ camp, I
+witnessed a familiar but fascinating display of deer nature. At sunrise
+I approached a bog, bordering a stream where a few good trout might be
+found, and on the edge of the opening stood a doe and her well-grown
+fawn, not twenty yards away. The fawn, a little buck with the nubs of
+his first antlers showing, threw up his head as I appeared, and in the
+same instant I dropped to the ground behind a mossy log. No whistle or
+sound of alarm followed the action; so I scraped a mat of moss from the
+log, put it on for a bonnet, and cautiously raised my head.
+
+The old doe was still feeding; the buck stood like a living statue, his
+whole attention fastened on the spot where I had disappeared. He had
+seen something, he knew not what, and was waiting for it to show itself
+again. When my bonnet appeared his eyes seemed to enlarge and flash as
+he caught the motion. Without changing his footing, for his surprise
+seemed to have rooted him in the ground, he began to sway his body to
+left or right, stretching his head high or dropping it low, taking a
+dozen graceful attitudes in order to view the queer bit of moss from
+different angles. Then he slowly raised a fore foot, put it down very
+gently, raised it again, stamped it down hard. Getting no response to
+his challenge, he sidled over to his mother, still keeping his eyes
+fastened on the log. At his touch or call she lifted her head, pointing
+her nose straight at me, as if he had somehow told her where to give
+heed.
+
+It was a wonderful sight, the multicolored bog spread like a rug at the
+feet of the glorious October woods, and standing on the crimson fringe
+of it these two beautiful creatures, demanding with flashing eyes who
+the intruder might be. For a full minute, while I held motionless, the
+doe kept her eyes steadily on the log; then, “Nothing there, little
+buck; don’t worry,” she said in her own silent way, and went to feeding
+once more.
+
+“But there is something; I saw it,” insisted the little buck, nudging
+his mother by swinging his head against her side. That was the first
+and only time, in that quick swing, when he took his eyes from what
+attracted them. The doe looked a second time, saw nothing uncommon, and
+had turned to feed along the edge of the opening when the little buck
+recalled her in some way. “Can’t you see it, that white thing like a
+face under the moss?” he was saying. “There! it moved again!”
+
+The mother, whose back was turned to me, twisted her head around as if
+to humor him, and to interest her I swayed the moss bonnet to and fro
+like a pendulum. At that she whirled, surprise written large on her,
+and I dropped my head, leaving her staring. When I looked again both
+deer were coming nearer, the mother ahead, the fawn holding back as if
+to say, “Careful now! It’s big, and it’s hiding just behind that log.”
+So they drew on warily, stopping to stamp a fore foot, and every time
+they challenged I gave the bonnet an answering wag. When they were so
+near that I knew they must soon distinguish my eyes from the moss, I
+sank out of sight. I was listening for their alarm-call or for the thud
+of their flying feet when a gray muzzle slid over the log, and I laid
+my hand fair on the mother’s cheek before she bounded away.
+
+Now there was nothing strange or new in all that; on the contrary, it
+was very much like what I had observed in other inquisitive deer. The
+only surprising part of the comedy was that the doe, though she had
+felt the touch of my hand and no doubt smelled the man behind it,
+stopped short after a few jumps and turned to stare at the log again.
+That she was still curious, still unsatisfied, was plain enough; what
+puzzles me to know is, whether she would have acted in the same way if
+one of the hungry hunters had been waiting in my shoes for the chance
+or moment to kill her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+AT CLOSE RANGE
+
+
+It is easy, much easier than you think, to get close to wild birds and
+beasts; for after you have met them a few times in the friendly,
+impersonal way I have tried to describe, two interesting traits appear:
+the first, that they do not see you clearly so long as you hold still;
+the second, that even their keen noses lose track of you after you have
+been quiet for a little time.
+
+The eye is a weak point in all animals I have chanced to observe, which
+apparently depend less on sight than on any other sense—so far as
+safety goes, that is. In gratifying their curiosity they seem to be all
+eyes. At other times they will catch an abrupt or unusual motion
+quickly enough; but they are strangely blind to any motionless object
+however large or small. Repeatedly when I have been sitting quiet,
+without concealment but with “neutral” clothes that harmonize with the
+soft woods colors, I have known deer, moose, caribou, bear, wolf, fox,
+lynx, otter, alert beasts of every kind, to approach within a few
+yards, giving no heed till a chirp or a slight motion called their
+attention. Then they would whirl upon me in astonishment, telling me by
+their attitude that till then they had not noticed or suspected me.
+Almost invariably at such times animals of the deer family would come a
+step nearer, their heads high, their eyes asking questions; but beasts
+of prey after one keen look would commonly drop their heads, as if I
+were of no consequence, and slyly circle me to get my wind. In either
+event success or a better view of the animal depended on just one
+condition, which was to hold absolutely still. So long as I met that
+condition, none of these wary beasts seemed to have any clear notion
+what they were looking at.
+
+Occasionally, indeed, their lack of discernment almost passes belief.
+One winter day, while crossing a frozen lake in Ontario, I noticed a
+distant speck moving on the snow, and stopped in my tracks to watch it.
+The speck turned my way, drew near and changed into an otter, who came
+rollicking along in his merry way, taking one or two quick jumps on his
+abbreviated legs and a long slide on his ample belly. As the air was
+dry and very still I had no fear of his nose, which is not as sensitive
+as many others (perhaps because of the peculiar valve or flap which
+closes it tight when an otter swims under water); but his eyes and
+other senses are extraordinarily good, and it seemed impossible that he
+should overlook a man standing erect on the snowy ice, as conspicuous
+as a fly in the milk. So I watched the approach with lively interest,
+wondering how Keeonekh would act in comparison with other members of
+his weasel family when he found himself near me, whether he would dart
+away like a fisher, or ignore me like a mink, or show his teeth at me
+like a little stoat.
+
+On he came, confidently, as an otter travels, giving no heed to the
+enemy in his path, till he halted with a paw resting on one of my
+snow-shoes and began to wiggle his broad muzzle, as if he found
+something in the air which he did not like. For several moments he
+hesitated, sniffing here, listening there, looking sharply about the
+lake, into the near-by woods, everywhere except up into my face, and
+then went on as he had been heading, leaving a straight trail behind
+him. No man can tell what was in his head, and a very intelligent head
+it is; but his action seemed to say that he did not see me when he
+passed literally under my nose. To him I was merely a stump, one of a
+dozen that projected here or there above the ice near the shore.
+
+Such an incident would be merely freakish if it happened once; but it
+happens again and again, becoming almost common or typical, when a man
+stands motionless in the presence of other birds or beasts. Twice in
+the big woods has the Canada lynx, a dull beast in comparison with the
+otter, passed me with an unseeing stare in his wild eyes. And I have
+crouched in the snow on a treeless barren while a band of caribou filed
+past, so near that I could see the muscles ripple under their sleek
+skins and hear the click-click of their hoofs as they walked. The
+greater part of the herd did not even notice me; the rest threw a
+passing glance in my direction, one halting as if he had a moment’s
+doubt, and went on without a sign of recognition.
+
+The eyes of birds are keener, as a rule; but it is still a question
+with me how much or how little they see of what is plain as a frog on a
+log to human vision. An owl has excellent eyes, which are at their best
+in the soft twilight; yet once as I sat quiet in the dusk a horned-owl
+swooped and struck at a motion of my head, not seeing the rest of me,
+one must think, since he is quick to take alarm when a man appears.
+Another owl showed even less discernment in that he overlooked me, head
+and all, at a yard’s distance and tried to get his game out from under
+my feet.
+
+A little dog had followed me that day, keeping out of sight till we
+were far from home, when he showed himself in a waggish way, as if he
+knew I would not have the heart to tie him up in that lonely place, as
+he deserved. All day long he had a vociferous and a “bully” time making
+a nuisance of himself, stirring up a hornets’ nest in every peaceful
+spot, chasing deer out of sight with a blithe rowdydow, swimming out to
+the raft on which I was fly-fishing, jumping in to get tangled in my
+landing-net when I reached for a big trout—in twenty ways showing that
+his business was to take care of me, though he was no dog of mine.
+
+Late in the afternoon, as I rested beside the homeward trail, the
+little dog rambled off by himself, still looking for trouble, like all
+his breed. Presently there was a yelp, a scurry, a glimpse of broad
+wings swooping, and back came the trouble-seeker like a streak, his
+eyes saying, “Look at this thing I brought you!” and his ears flapping
+like a pair of wings to help him along. Over him hovered a big
+barred-owl, grim as fate, striking, missing, mounting, swooping again,
+brushing me with his wings as he whirled around my head. Between my
+heels and the log on which I was sitting my protector wedged himself
+securely; the owl with a vicious snapping of his beak sailed up into an
+evergreen and made himself invisible. In a moment or two the little dog
+came out and was wagging his tail mightily over the adventure when the
+owl slanted down on noiseless wings and struck a double set of claws
+into him. Then I interfered, rising to my feet; and then, for the first
+time I think, the owl saw me as something other than a stump and
+vanished quickly in the spruce woods.
+
+Hawks likewise have marvelous eyes for all things that move; but I
+began to question the quality of their vision one day when I was
+watching a deer, and a red-shouldered hawk lit so near me that I
+reached out a hand and caught him.
+
+Another afternoon I came upon a goshawk, keenest of all the falcons,
+that had just killed a grouse in the tote-road I was following. He
+darted away as I came round a bend; but thinking he might soon return,
+for he is a bold and a persistent kind of pirate, I entered the woods
+at a swift walk, as if going away. Then I worked cautiously back to the
+road through a thicket, and waited on a log in deep shadow, some fifty
+yards above where the grouse lay undisturbed. Luckily I had a rifle, an
+accurate little twenty-two, often carried as medicine for “vermin,” and
+I intended to kill the goshawk at the first chance. He is the viking
+among birds, and as such has a romantic interest; but wherever he
+appears he is a veritable pest, the most destructive of the hungry
+hordes that come down from the North to play havoc with our game.
+
+For a long time the goshawk hovered about, sweeping on tireless wings
+high above the trees; but though I was quiet enough to deceive any bird
+or beast, he held warily aloof. Once he disappeared, remaining so long
+away that I was beginning to think he had wearied of the game of
+patience, when I heard an eery call and saw him wheeling over the road
+again. His absence became clear a little later when he perched on a
+blasted pine, far out of range, where he remained watching for fifteen
+or twenty minutes, his only motion being an occasional turning of the
+head. That he was hungry and bound to have his own was plain enough;
+the puzzle was why he did not come and get it, for it seemed highly
+improbable that he would notice a motionless figure at that distance. I
+think now that he was sailing high over my head when I re-entered the
+trail; that he knew where I was all the time, not because he saw me on
+the log, but because he did not see me go away. Before sunset he headed
+off toward the mountain, going early to roost with all his kind.
+
+Dawn found me back on the old road, as much to test the matter of
+vision as to put an end to the game-destroyer. As a precaution I had
+changed clothes, and now shifted position, avoiding the log because the
+wary bird would surely take a look at it before coming down. My stand
+was a weathered stump beside the road, against which I sat on a carpet
+of moss, without concealment of any kind. At a short distance lay the
+grouse, a poor crumpled thing, just as he had wilted under the hawk’s
+swoop.
+
+Thus a half-hour or more passed comfortably. A gorgeous cock-partridge
+sauntered into the open, saw me when I nodded to him, and went slowly
+off with that graceful, balancing motion which a grouse affects when he
+is well satisfied with himself. Then, as the sun rose, there was a
+swift-moving shadow, a rustle of pinions; the goshawk swept down the
+road in front of me and lit beside his game. He was a handsome bandit,
+in full adult plumage; his gray breast was penciled in shadowy lines,
+while his back was a foggy blue, as if in his northern home he had
+caught the sheen of the heavens above and of rippling waters beneath
+his flight. His folded wings stood out squarely from his shoulders with
+an impression of power, like an eagle’s. There was something noble in
+his poise, in his challenging eye, in the forward thrust of his fierce
+head; but the spell was broken at the first step. He moved awkwardly,
+unwillingly it seemed; his great curving talons interfered with his
+footing when he touched the earth.
+
+This time, instead of a rifle, there was a trim shotgun across my
+knees. The hawk was mine whether he stood quiet or leaped into swift
+flight, and feeling sure of him now I watched awhile, wondering whether
+he would break up his game with his claws, as some owls do, or tear it
+to pieces with his hooked beak. For a moment he did neither, but stood
+splendidly alert over his kill. Once he turned his head completely
+around over either shoulder, sweeping his piercing glance over me, but
+seeing nothing unusual. Then he seized his game in one foot and struck
+his beak into the breast, making the feathers fly as he laid the
+delicate flesh open. When I found myself weakening, growing sentimental
+at the thought that it was his last meal, his last taste of freedom and
+the wild, I remembered the grouse and got quietly on my feet. Though
+busy with his feast, he caught the first shadow of a motion; I can
+still see the gleam in his wild eyes as he sprang aloft.
+
+I thought him beyond all harm as he lay on his back, one outstretched
+wing among the feathers of his victim; but he struck like a flash when
+I reached down for him carelessly. “Take that! and that! and remember
+me!” he said, driving his weapons up with astonishing force, a force
+that kills or paralyzes his game at the first grip. Four of his
+needle-pointed talons went to the bone, and the others were well buried
+in the flesh of my arm. The old viking had been some time with his
+ancestors before I pried him loose.
+
+As for the sense of smell, on which most animals depend for accurate
+information, I have tried numerous experiments with deer, moose, bear
+and other creatures to learn how far they can wind a man, and how their
+powers compare one with another. There is no definite answer to the
+problem, so baffling are the conditions of observing these shy beasts;
+but you are in for some surprises, at least, when you attempt to solve
+it in the open. You will learn, for example, that when a gale is
+blowing the animals are more at sea than in a dead calm; or that in a
+gusty wind you can approach them about as easily from one side as from
+another. Such a wind rolls and eddies violently, rebounding from every
+hill or point or shore in such erratic fashion that the animals have no
+means of locating a danger when they catch a fleeting sniff of it. It
+is for this reason, undoubtedly, that all game is uncommonly wild on a
+windy day: the constant motion of leaves or tossing boughs breeds
+confusion in their eyes, and the woodsy smells are so broken by
+cross-currents that they cannot be traced to their source. So it has
+happened more than once on a gusty day that a deer, catching my scent
+on the rebound, has whirled and rushed straight at me, producing the
+momentary illusion that he was charging.
+
+With a steady but not strong wind blowing in their direction, I have
+seen deer become alarmed while I was yet a quarter-mile away; this on a
+lake, where there was nothing to interfere with the breeze or the
+scent. On the burnt lands or the open barrens I have seen bear and
+caribou throw up their heads and break away while I was even farther
+removed. In a light breeze the distance is much shorter, varying from
+fifty to two hundred yards, according to the amount of moisture in the
+air. On days that are still or very dry, or when the air is filled with
+smoke from a forest fire (the latter soon inflames all sensitive
+nostrils), the animals are at sea again, and depend less on their noses
+than on their eyes or ears.
+
+Another surprising thing is, that the animal’s ability to detect you
+through his sense of smell is largely governed by your own activity or
+bodily condition. Thus, when a man is perspiring freely or moving
+quickly, his scent is stronger and travels much wider than when he is
+sauntering about. But if a man sits absolutely quiet, a clean man
+especially, no animal can detect him beyond a few feet, I think, for
+the reason that a resting man is like a resting bird or beast in that
+he gives off very little body scent, which remains on the ground close
+about him instead of floating off on the air currents. Even when the
+trees are tossing in a gale there is little stir on the ground, not in
+the woods at least, and the closer you hold to Mother Earth the less
+likelihood is there of any beast smelling you.
+
+All ground-nesting birds depend for their lives on this curious
+provision of nature. Were it not for the fact that practically no scent
+escapes while they are brooding their eggs, very few of them would live
+to bring forth a family in a wood nightly traversed by such keen-nosed
+enemies as the fox and the weasel. My old setter would wind a running
+grouse or quail at an incredible distance, and would follow him by
+picking his scent from the air; but I have taken that same dog on a
+leash near the same birds when they were brooding their eggs, and he
+could not or would not detect them unless he were brought within a few
+feet, or (a rare occurrence) unless a creeping ground-breeze blew
+directly from the nest into his face.
+
+The same provision guards animals, such as deer and caribou, which
+build no dens but leave their helpless young on the ground. Two or
+three times, after finding a fawn in the woods, I have tested his
+concealment by means of my young dog’s nose; and I may add that Rab
+will point a deer as stanchly as he points a grouse or woodcock, for he
+is still in the happy, irresponsible stage when everything that lives
+in the woods is game to him. So long as the fawn remains motionless
+where his mother hid him, the dog must be almost on top of him before
+pointing or showing any sign of game. But if the little fellow runs or
+even rises to his feet at our approach (fawns are apt to do this as
+they grow older), the dog seems to catch the scent after the first
+motion; he begins to cat-foot, his nose up as in following an air
+trail, and steadies to a point while he is still many yards away from
+where the fawn was hiding.
+
+The nose of a wolf is keener than that of any dog I ever knew; yet I
+once trailed a pack of wolves that passed within sixteen measured feet
+of where two deer were sleeping in a hole in the snow. The wolves were
+hunting, too, for they killed and partially ate a buck a little farther
+on; but the trail said that they had passed close to these sleeping
+deer without detecting them.
+
+As for the man-scent, you may judge of that by the violent start or the
+headlong rush when an animal catches the first alarming whiff of it. If
+he passes quietly on his way, therefore, you may be reasonably sure he
+has not smelled you. To the latter conclusion I have been forced many
+times when I have been watching in the woods, sitting quiet for hours
+at a stretch, and a deer or bear or fox, or some other beast with nose
+as keen as a brier, has passed at a dozen yards’ distance without a
+sign to indicate that he was aware of me. Some of these animals came
+much nearer; so near, in fact, that I was scary of a closer approach
+until I had called their attention to what lay ahead of them.
+
+So long as you are seen or suspected, you need have little fear of any
+wild beast (only the tame or half-tame are dangerous), but a brute that
+stumbles upon you in an unexpected place or moment is always a problem.
+Nine times out of ten he will fall all over himself in his haste to get
+away; but the tenth time he may fall upon you and give you a mauling.
+Moose, for example, are apt to strike a terrible blow with their fore
+feet, or to upset a canoe when the jack-light approaches them; not to
+attack, I think, at least not consciously, but in blind panic or to
+ward off a fancied enemy. So when I have watched from the shore of a
+lake and a moose came swinging along without noticing me, I have risen
+to my feet or thrown my hat at the big brute when he was as near as I
+cared to have him. And more than once, after a tremendous start of
+surprise, he has come nearer with his hackles up as soon as he got over
+the first effect of my demonstration. Yet when I am roaming the woods
+that same brute will catch my scent at from two to five hundred yards,
+and rush away before I can get even a glimpse of him.
+
+That the same surprising sense-limitation is upon deer and other game
+animals may be inferred from the following experience, which is typical
+of many others. I was perched among some cedar roots on the shore of a
+pond, one September day, watching a buck with the largest antlers I
+have ever seen on one of his kind. I had been some time quiet when he
+glided out to feed in a little bay, on my right; and my heart was with
+him in the wish that he might keep his noble crown through the hunting
+season, for his own pleasure and the adornment of the woods and the
+confusion of all head-hunters. There was no breeze; but a moistened
+finger told of a faint drift of air from the lake to the woods.
+
+As I watched the buck, there came to my ears a crunching of gravel from
+the opposite direction, and two deer appeared on the point at my left,
+heading briskly down into the bay. They passed between my outstretched
+feet and the water’s edge, where the strip of shore was perhaps three
+yards wide; then they turned in my direction, seeing or smelling
+nothing, went slowly up the bank and halted at the edge of the woods to
+the right and a little behind me, so close that I dared not move even
+my eyes to follow them. I measured the distance afterward, and found
+that from their hoof-marks to the cedar root against which I rested was
+less than eight feet. Imperceptibly I turned for another look, and saw
+both deer at attention, their heads luckily pointed away from me. They
+were regarding the big buck intently, as if to question him. They
+showed no alarm as yet; but they were plainly uneasy, searching the
+forest on all sides and at times turning to look over my head upon the
+breathless lake. Every nervous action said that they found something
+wrong in the air, some hint or taint or warning which they could not
+define. So they moved alertly into the woods, halting, listening,
+testing the air, using all their senses to locate a danger which they
+had passed and left behind them.
+
+From such experiences one might reasonably conclude that, like the
+brooding grouse or the hidden fawn, a motionless man gives off so
+little scent that the keenest nose is at fault until it comes almost
+within touching distance. If any further proof is needed, you may find
+it when you sleep in the open, and shy creatures draw near without any
+fear of you. By daylight deer, bear and moose are extremely timid; they
+rarely come within eyeshot of your camp, and they vanish at the first
+sniff which tells them that you have invaded their feeding-grounds. But
+when you are well asleep the same animals will pass boldly through your
+camp-yard; or they will awaken you, as they have many times awakened
+me, when you are tenting or sleeping under the stars by some outlying
+pond. If you lie quiet, content to listen, the invading animal will
+move freely here or there without concern; but no sooner do you begin
+to stir, however quietly, than he catches the warning scent, and a
+thudding of earth or a smashing of brush tells the rest of the story.
+
+I recall one night, cloudy and very still, when I slept under my canoe
+on a strip of sand beside a wilderness lake. The movement of an animal
+near at hand awoke me. In the black darkness I could see nothing; but
+somehow I knew he was big, and aside from the crepitation of the sand,
+which I plainly heard, I seemed to feel the brute near me. For a moment
+there was a pause, a dead silence; then came a thump, a rattlety-bang;
+the canoe shook as something hit the lower end of it, and the creature
+moved away. There was nothing to be done without eyes, so I snuggled
+the blanket closer and went to sleep again. In the morning there were
+the tracks of a moose, a bull as I judged from the shape of his feet,
+to say that he had come down the shore at a fast walk, halted, stepped
+over the stern of the canoe, and went on without hastening his pace.
+
+That was odd enough; but more surprising were some tracks on the other
+side, between the bow of the canoe and the woods. Very faint and dainty
+tracks they were, as if a soft pad had touched the sand here and there
+in an uneven line; but they told of a fox who had come trotting along
+under the bank, and who had passed in the night without awakening me.
+That neither he nor the moose had smelled the sleeping man, or nothing
+alarming in him at least, is about as near to certainty as you will
+come in interpreting animal action.
+
+
+
+There is another and not wholly unreasonable hypothesis which may help
+to explain such phenomena; namely, that it is not the scent of man but
+of excitement, anger, blood-lust or some other abnormal quality which
+alarms a wild animal. It sounds queer, I know, to say that anger can be
+smelled; but it is more than probable that anger or fierce excitement
+of any kind distils in the body a kind of poison which is physical and
+sensible. Such excitement certainly weakens a man, clogging his system
+with the ashes of its hot fires; and there is no reason why it should
+not smell to earth as well as to high heaven.
+
+You have but to open your eyes and expand your nostrils for some
+evidence of this matter. Bees when angered give off a pungent odor,
+which is so different from the ordinary smell of the hive that even
+your dull nose may detect the change of temper. The same is true of
+even cold-blooded reptiles. When you find a rattler or a black-snake
+squirming in the sun, you can smell him faintly at a few yards’
+distance. Now stir him up with a pole, or pin him to the earth by
+pressing a forked stick with short prongs over his neck. As the snake
+becomes enraged he pours off a rank odor, very different from the musky
+smell that first attracted your notice, and it travels much wider, and
+clings to your clothes for an hour afterward. It is not only possible
+but very likely, therefore, that strong emotions affect the bodies of
+all creatures in a way perceptible to senses other than sight. If so,
+one man who is peaceable and another who is angry or highly excited may
+give off such different odors that a brute with sensitive nostrils may
+be merely curious about the one and properly afraid of the other.
+
+That wild animals instinctively fear the scent of humanity, as such, is
+probably not true. The notion arises, I think, from judging the natural
+animal by those we have made unnatural by abuse or persecution.
+Whenever man penetrates a wild region for the first time he finds, as a
+rule, that the animals have little fear of him, the tameness of wild
+game having been noted with surprise by almost every explorer. It has
+been noted also, but without surprise, by saints and ascetics who “for
+the greater glory of God” have adopted a life of solitude and
+meditation, and who have often found the birds or beasts about their
+hermitage to be quite fearless of them, and receptive of their
+kindness. Not till the abundant flocks and herds of a new region have
+been harried and decimated by senseless slaughter do the survivors
+begin to be fearful and unapproachable, as we unfortunately know them.
+Yet even now, no sooner do we drop our persecution and assume a
+rational or humane attitude than the wild ducks come to the boat
+landing of a winter hotel, deer feed at our haystacks, and bears come
+in broad daylight to comfort themselves at our garbage-cans. Such
+things could hardly be if the fear of man were an age-old or
+instinctive inheritance.
+
+Nearer home, on any farm bordering the wilderness, you may see wild
+deer feeding quite tamely about the edges of the cleared fields all
+summer. I recall one such farm in Maine, where the owner had fifteen
+acres of green oats waving over virgin soil—a glorious crop for me, but
+for him an occasion of lamentation. You could go through that field at
+any hour before six in the morning or after six at night and find a
+dozen deer with a moose or two making themselves at home. The owner’s
+cattle were kept out by a rail fence; but the moose simply leaned
+against the fence and went through, while the nimble deer sailed over
+the obstruction like grasshoppers. On all such farms the deer have the
+scent of man almost constantly in their nostrils, and they are simply
+watchful, running when you approach too near, but turning after a short
+flight to have a look at you. At times you may see them feeding when
+the scent of laborers or fishermen blows fairly over them. But when
+October comes, and the law is “off,” and wild-eyed hunters appear with
+guns in their hands and death in their thoughts, then the same deer
+quickly become as other and wilder creatures, rushing off in alarm at
+the first sniff of an enemy. The fact and the changed action are
+evident enough; the only interesting question is, To what extent does
+the smell of man change when he changes his peaceable ways?
+
+Two or three times I have had opportunity to test the effect of the
+human scent in another way, the first time being when I had the good
+luck to see a natural child and a natural animal together. The child, a
+baby girl just beginning to toddle, was making a journey by means of a
+comfortable Indian paukee on my back, and I had left her in an opening
+beside a portage trail while I went back to my canoe for a thing I had
+forgotten. While I was gone, three deer sauntered into the opening.
+They saw the baby, and were instantly as curious about her as so many
+gossips, a little spotted fawn especially. The baby saw them, and began
+creeping eagerly forward, calling or “crowing” as she went. The deer
+saw and heard and smelled her every moment; yet they walked around her
+with springy steps, now on this side, now on that, showing a world of
+curiosity in their bright eyes, but never a sign of fear.
+
+From a distance I watched the lovely scene, kindling at the beauty of
+it, or feeling a bit anxious when I saw the sharp feet of the old doe a
+little too near the sunny head or the outstretched hands. Then an eddy
+of wind from the mountain got behind me and whirled over the deer. They
+caught the scent and were away with a wild alarm-call, their white
+flags flying, and the baby waving by-by as they vanished in the woods.
+
+Quite naturally, therefore, when a sensitive animal runs away from me,
+I find myself thinking that perhaps it is not the smell of humanity but
+of some evil trait or quality which frightens him. I first laid down
+this hypothesis after meeting a strange, childlike man, who had a
+passion for roaming by himself in the fields or woods. White men, after
+a puzzling acquaintance, would tap their heads or call him crazy; an
+Indian would look once in his eyes and say, very softly, “The Great
+Spirit has touched him.” He was all gentleness, without a thought or
+possibility of harm in his nature. He was also without fear, and
+perhaps for this reason he inspired no fear in others. When he appeared
+in the woods, singing to himself, the animals would watch him for a
+moment, and then go their ways quietly, as if they understood him. What
+would happen if a race of such men lived near the wood folk must be
+left to the imagination.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY POND: A SYMPHONY OF THE WOODS
+
+
+X
+
+THE TRAIL
+
+
+To reach my pond you must leave your canoe on the shore of
+Sungeegamook, the home lake, and go eastward through the big woods.
+Yonder is the landing, that bank of green topped by “everlasting” and
+blue asters, with a cleft like an arched doorway in the forest behind
+it. A rugged jack-pine leans out over a bit of shingle, as if to
+indicate a good place to beach your canoe, and there is something
+curiously alive, almost sentient, in its attitude. The old tree seems
+to watch your approach; through its leaves runs a low murmur of welcome
+as you step ashore.
+
+Entering the woods (and because you are alone, and therefore natural,
+something in their dim aisles, their mysterious depths, their breathing
+silence, makes you go gently) you find yourself in an old logging-road,
+once a garish symbol of man’s destructiveness, but growing yearly more
+subdued, more beautiful, since Nature began her work of healing. The
+earth beneath your feet, the restful earth which the lumbermen left
+torn by iron tools or rent by dynamite, has again put on her
+soft-colored garments. Feathery beds of fern push boldly into the road
+from shadowy places; wild grasses fill all its sunny openings with
+their bloom and fragrance; and winding down through shade or sunshine
+comes a trail made by the feet of deer and moose. Already these timid
+animals have adopted the forgotten road as a runway; you may meet them
+here when you return in the evening twilight.
+
+Everywhere beside the trail are old marks of the destroyer. Noble
+maples or cedars that were centuries growing have been slashed down,
+dismembered, thrust aside to decay, and all because they stood in the
+way of a lumber-boss who thought only of getting his cut of spruce down
+to the lake. To look upon such trees, dead and shorn of their beauty,
+is to feel pity or indignation; but Nature does not share your feeling,
+being too abundant of life and resource to waste any moment in regret.
+Already she is upbuilding what man has torn down. Glaring ax-wounds
+have all disappeared under bandages of living moss; every fallen log
+has hidden its loss under a mantle of lichen, soft and gray, which
+speaks not of death but of life renewed.
+
+Where the sun touches these prostrate giants a blush of delicate color
+spreads over them. See, it deepens as you look upon it curiously, and
+you examine it to find a multitude of “fairy-cups” on slender stems,
+each lifting its scarlet chalice to the light. Very soft and inviting
+seats they offer, yielding to your weight, sending up an odor as of
+crushed herbs; but do not accept the invitation. If you must halt to
+rest or to enjoy the stillness, sit not down on one of these mossy
+logs, but before it at a little distance, and let its blended colors be
+to your eye what the wind in the pine is to your ear, or the smell of
+hemlock to your nostrils. Then will all your senses delight in harmony,
+their natural birthright, while you rest by the way.
+
+Where the old road winds about the end of a ridge, avoiding every steep
+pitch, young balsams are crowding thickly into it; where it turns
+downward to the lowlands, quick-growing alders claim it as their own;
+and as you leave the lake far behind it begins to divide interminably,
+each branch breaking into smaller branches, like the twigs of a tree as
+you trace them outward. The twig ends with a bud in clear space; but
+the farther or landward end of a logging-road dwindles to a deer-path,
+the path to a rabbit-run, and the run vanishes in some gloomy cedar
+swamp or trackless thicket where is no outlook on any side.
+
+It is in such places, while you puzzle over another man’s road instead
+of keeping your own trail straight, that you are most apt to get lost.
+Coming back you need have no fear of going astray, since all these
+trails lead to the main road, and thence downhill to the lake; but
+going forward it is well to steer clear of all branch roads, which lead
+nowhere and confuse the sense of direction.
+
+Leaving the road behind, therefore, and heading still eastward, you
+cross a ridge where the hardwoods stand, as their ancestors stood,
+untouched by the tools of men. Immense trunks of beech or sugar-maple
+or yellow birch tower upward wide apart, the moss of centuries upon
+them; far overhead is a delicate tracery of leaves, a dance of light
+against the blue, and over all is the blessed silence.
+
+Beyond the ridge the ground slopes downward to a uniform level. Soon
+the moss grows deeper underfoot, with a coolness that speaks of
+perpetual moisture. The forest becomes dense, almost bewildering; here
+a “black growth” of spruce or fir, there a tangle of moosewood, yonder
+a swale where impenetrable alder-thickets make it impossible to hold a
+straight course. Because all this growth is useless to the lumberman,
+there is no cutting to be seen; but because I have passed this way
+before, instinctively following the same course like an animal, a faint
+winding trail begins to appear, with a bent twig or a blazed tree at
+every turn to give direction.
+
+As you move forward more confidently, learning the woodsman’s way of
+looking far ahead to pick up the guiding signs before you come to them,
+the dim forest suddenly brightens; a wave of light runs in, saying as
+it passes overhead that you are near an opening. As if to confirm the
+message, the trail runs into a well-worn deer-path, which looks as if
+the animals that used it knew well where they were going. Clumps of
+delicate young larches spring up ahead; between them open filmy vistas,
+like windows draped in lace, and across one vista stretches a ribbon of
+silver. A few more steps and—there! my little pond is smiling at you,
+reflecting the blue deeps of heaven or the white of passing clouds from
+its setting of pale-green larch-trees and crimson mosses.
+
+And now, if you are responsive, you shall have a new impression of this
+old world, the wonderful impression which a wilderness lake gives at
+the moment of discovery, but never again afterward. As you emerge from
+cover of the woods, the pond seems to awaken like a sleeper. See, it
+returns your gaze, and on its quiet face is a look of surprise that you
+are here. Enjoy that first awakening look; for there is more of wisdom
+and pleasure in it, believe me, than in hurrying forth blindly intent
+on making a map or catching a trout, or doing something else that calls
+for sight to the neglect of insight. All sciences, including
+chartography and angling, can easily be learned by any man; but
+understanding is a gift of God, and it comes only to those who keep
+their hearts open.
+
+Your own nature is here your best guide, and it shows you a surprising
+thing: that your old habitual impressions of the world have suddenly
+become novel and strange, as if this smiling landscape were but just
+created, and you were the first to look with seeing eyes upon the glory
+of it. It tells you, further, if you listen to its voice, that creation
+is all like this, under necessity to be beautiful, and that the beauty
+is still as delightful as when the evening and the morning were the
+first day. This dance of water, this rain of light, this shimmer of
+air, this upspringing of trees, this blue heaven bending over all—no
+artist ever painted such things; no poet ever sang or could sing them.
+Like a mother’s infinite tenderness, they await your appreciation, your
+silence, your love; but they hide from your description in words or
+pigments.
+
+Finally, in the lowest of whispers, your nature tells you that the most
+impressive and still most natural thing in this quiet scene is the
+conscious life that broods silently over it. As the little pond seems
+to awaken, to be alive and sentient, so also does that noble tree
+yonder when you view it for the first time, or that delicate orchid
+wafting its fragrance over the lonely bog. Each reflects something
+greater than itself, and it is that greater “something” which appeals
+to you when you enter the solitude. Your impressions here are those of
+the first man, a man who found many beautiful things in a garden, and
+God walking among them in the cool of the day. Call the brooding life
+God or the Infinite or the Unknown or the Great Spirit or the Great
+Mystery—what you will; the simple fact is that you have an impression
+of a living Being, who first speaks to you in terms of personality that
+you understand.
+
+So much, and more, of eternal understanding you may have if you but
+tarry a moment under these larches with an open mind. Then, when you
+have honored your first impression, which will abide with you always,
+you may trace out the physical features of my pond at leisure. Just
+here it is not very wide; your eye easily overlooks it to rest with
+pleasure on a great mound of moss, colored as no garden of flowers was
+ever colored, swelling above the bog on the farther shore. On either
+hand the water sparkles wider away, disappearing around a bend with an
+invitation to come and see. To the left it ends in velvety shadow under
+a bank of evergreen; to the right it seems to merge into the level
+shore, where shadow melts with substance in a belt of blended colors. A
+few yards back from the shore groups of young larches lift their
+misty-green foliage above the caribou moss; they seem not to be rooted
+deep in the earth, but to be all standing on tiptoe, as if to look over
+the brim of my pond and see their own reflections. Everywhere between
+these larch groups are shadowy corridors; and in one of them your eye
+is caught by a spot of bright orange. The spot moves, disappears,
+flashes out again from the misty green, and a deer steps forth to
+complete the wilderness picture with the grace of life.
+
+Such is my pond, hidden away in the heart of a caribou bog, which is
+itself well hidden in dense forest. Before I found it the wild ducks
+had made it a summer home from time immemorial; and now, since I
+disturb it no more, it is possessed in peace by a family of beavers;
+yet I still think of it as mine, not by grace of any artificial law or
+deed, but by the more ancient right of possession and enjoyment. A
+hundred lakes by which I have tented are greater or more splendid; but
+the first charm of any wilderness scene is its solitude, and on these
+greater lakes the impression of solitude may be broken by the flash of
+a paddle-blade in the sun, or the chuck of an ax under the twilight, or
+the gleam of a camp-fire through the darkness. But here on my pond you
+may know how Adam felt when he looked abroad: no raft has ever ruffled
+its surface; no ax-stroke or moan of smitten tree has ever disturbed
+its quiet; no camp-fire has ever gleamed on its waters. Its solitude is
+still that of the first day; and it has no name, save for the Indian
+word that came unbidden at the moment of finding it, like another
+Sleeping Beauty, in the woods.
+
+Do you ask how I came to find my pond? Not by searching, but rather by
+the odd chance of being myself lost. I had gone astray one afternoon,
+and was pushing through some black growth when an alarm rose near at
+hand. A deer whistled loudly, crying “Heu! heu! heu!” as he jumped
+away, and on the heels of his cry came a quacking of flushed ducks.
+
+Till that moment I thought I knew where I was; but the quacking brought
+doubt, and then bewilderment. If a duck tells you anything in the
+woods, he tells you of water, plenty of it; but the map showed no body
+of water nearer than Big Pine Pond, which I had fished that day, and
+which should be three or four miles behind me. Turning in the direction
+of the alarm, I soon broke out of the cover upon a caribou bog, a
+mysterious expanse never before suspected in that region, and before me
+was the gleam of water in the sunshine. “A pond, a new one, and what a
+beauty!” I thought with elation, as I caught its awakening look and
+feasted my eyes on its glory of color. Then I gave it an Indian name
+and hurried away; for I was surely off my course, and the hour was late
+for lingering in strange woods. Somewhere to the west of me was the
+home lake; so westward I headed, making a return-compass of bent twigs,
+till I set my feet in a branch of the old logging-road. And that chance
+trail is the one I have ever since followed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+WOODSY IMPRESSIONS
+
+
+Next morning I returned to explore my find at leisure. One part of that
+exploration was to go completely around the bog, to learn its guiding
+landmarks and compass-bearings; but an earlier and better part was to
+sit quietly beside my pond to hear whatever it might have to say to me.
+If that last sounds fanciful, remember that many things are voiceless
+in this world, but few are wholly dumb. Of the numberless ponds that
+brighten the northern wilderness, some were made by beavers, others by
+flood or glacier or earthquake, and no two of them tell the same story
+or make the same impression. They are like so many unspoiled Indians,
+whom we regard from a distance as being mysteriously alike, but who
+have different traditions, ideals, personalities, and even different
+languages.
+
+I know not what the spell of any lonely place may be when you make
+yourself part of it; I only know that it stirs one strangely, like the
+flute note of a wood-thrush or a song without words. Though I never met
+with an adventure on my little pond, never cast a fly to learn whether
+any trout lurked in its waters, never thought of firing a shot at its
+abundant game, yet season after season I returned to it expectantly,
+and went away satisfied. Such a pond has a charm of its own, a spell
+which our forebears sought to express in terms of nymphs or puckwudgies
+or water-sprites. It grows a better crop than trout, attracts a finer
+game than deer or water-fowl, and you can seldom visit it without
+learning something new about your natural self or the wood folk or the
+friendly universe.
+
+Thus, it happens on a day when you are waiting beside your pond, or
+wending your way to it, that a moose or a fox or a dainty grouse
+appears unexpectedly near you; and instantly, without thought or
+motive, you “freeze” in your tracks or, if you are not seen, shrink
+deeper into the shadow for concealment. The action is natural,
+involuntary, instinctive, precisely like the action of a young deer
+under similar circumstances; but when it is over you understand it, and
+smile at finding yourself becoming more and more like other natural
+creatures,—going softly, that is, making yourself inconspicuous without
+trying or knowing how, and having no thought of harm to any bird or
+beast, but only of watching him or gauging his course while remaining
+yourself unseen. Only by some such method can you learn anything worth
+knowing about a wild animal: books describe, naturalists classify and
+sportsmen kill him; but to understand him you must be a sharer of his
+quiet ways.
+
+Comes another day, a day when you are in love with solitude itself,
+when you learn with surprise that a man is never lonely when alone in
+the woods; that ideals may be quite as companionable as folks; and that
+around you in a goodly company are beauty, peace, spacious freedom and
+harmonious thoughts, with a hint also, to some minds, of angels and
+ministers of grace. The Attendant Spirit of “Comus,” the Ariel of “The
+Tempest,” the good fairies of all folk,—these are never understood in
+the town, nor in the woods unless you enter them alone.
+
+At a later time, and with a thrill of great wonder, you may discover
+the meaning of silence, and of the ancient myth of a lovely goddess of
+silence; not the dead silence of a dungeon, which may roar in a man’s
+ears till it deafens him or drives him mad, but the exquisite living
+silence of nature, a silence which at any moment may break into an
+elfin ringing of bells, or into a faintly echoing sound of melody, as
+if stars or unseen beings were singing far away.
+
+This impression of melody is often real, not illusory, and may be
+explained by the impact of air-currents on resonant shells of wood,
+hundreds of which fall to humming with the voice of ’cellos and
+wind-harps; but there is another experience of the solitude, more
+subtle but none the less real, for which only the psychologist will
+venture to give an accounting. Once in a season, perhaps, comes an hour
+when, no matter what your plans or desires may be, your mind seems
+intent on some unrelated affair of its own. As you hurry over the
+trail, you may be thinking of catching a trout or stalking a buck or
+building a camp or getting to windward of a corporation; meanwhile your
+subconscious mind, disdaining your will or your worry, is busily making
+pictures of whatever attractive thing it sees,—radiant little pictures,
+sunshiny or wind-swept, which shall be reproduced for your pleasure
+long after the important matters which then occupied you are clean
+forgotten.
+
+Here is the story of one such picture, a reflection, no doubt, of the
+primitive trait or quality called place-memory, which enables certain
+animals or savages to recognize any spot on which their eyes have once
+rested.
+
+One late afternoon, years after I had found my pond, I crossed the
+mountain from distant Ragged Lake, heading for the home lake by a new
+route. There was no trail; but near the foot of the western slope of
+the hills I picked up an old lumber road which seemed to lead in the
+right direction. For a time all went well, and confidently; but when
+the road dipped into an immense hollow, and there showed signs of
+petering out, I followed it with increasing doubt, not knowing where I
+might come out of the woods or be forced to spend the night. As I
+circled through a swale, having left the road to avoid a press of
+alders that filled it, an ash-tree lifted its glossy head above a
+thicket with a cheery “Well met again, pilgrim! Whither away now?”
+
+It was a surprising hail in that wild place, suggestive of dreams or
+sleep-walking; but under the illusion was a grain of reality which
+brought me to an instant halt. After passing under thousands of silent
+trees all day, suddenly here was one speaking to me. And not only that,
+but wearing a familiar look, like a face which smiles its recognition
+of you while you try in vain to place it. Where, when had I seen that
+tree before? No, impossible! I had never before entered this part of
+the vast forest. Yet I must have seen it somewhere, or it could not now
+stir a familiar memory. Nonsense! just a trick of the imagination. I
+must hurry on. Thus my thoughts ran, like a circling hare; and all the
+while the ash-tree seemed to be smiling at my perplexity.
+
+The man who ignores such a hint has much to learn about woodcraft,
+which is largely a subconscious art; so I sat down to smoke a
+council-pipe with myself and the ash-tree over the matter. No sooner
+was the mind left to its own unhampered way than it began to piece bits
+of a puzzle-picture deftly together; and when the picture was complete
+I knew exactly where I was, and where I might quickly find a familiar
+trail. Eight years before, in an idle hour when nothing stirred on my
+pond, I had explored a mile or so beyond the bog to the south, only to
+find a swampy, desolate country without a trail or conspicuous landmark
+of any kind. It was while I passed through this waste, seeking nothing
+in particular and returning to my pond, that the mind took its snapshot
+of a certain tree, and preserved the picture so carefully, so minutely,
+that years later the original was instantly recognized. Many similar
+ash-trees grew on that flat, each with its glossy crown and its gray
+shaft flecked by dark-green moss; what there was in this one to attract
+me, what outward grace or inward tree-sprite, I have not yet found out.
+
+Another subconscious record seems to have been made for beauty alone,
+with its consequent pleasure, rather than for utility. As I watched my
+pond one summer morning, intent on learning what attracted so many deer
+to its shores, the mind apparently chose its own moment for making a
+perfect picture, a masterpiece, which should hang in its woodsy frame
+on my mental wall forever. The sky was wondrously clear, the water
+dancing, the air laden with the fragrance of peat and sweet-scented
+grass. Deer were slow in coming that morning, and meanwhile nothing of
+consequence stirred on my pond; but there was still abundant
+satisfaction in the brilliant dragon-flies that balanced on bending
+reeds, or in the brood of wild ducks that came bobbing out like young
+mischief—makers from a hidden bogan, or even in the face of the pond
+itself, as it brightened under a gleam of sunshine or frowned at a
+passing cloud or broke into a laugh at the touch of a cat’s-paw wind.
+Suddenly all these pleasant minor matters were brushed aside when a
+bush quivered and held still on the farther shore.
+
+All morning the bushes had been quivering, showing the silvery side of
+their leaves to every breeze; but now their motion spoke of life, and
+spoke truly, for out from under the smitten bilberries came a bear to
+stand alert in the open. The fore part of his body was lifted up as he
+planted his paws on a tussock; his massive head was thrust forward as
+he tried to penetrate the far distance with his near-sighted eyes. He
+was not suspicious, not a bit; his nose held steady as a pointing
+dog’s, instead of rocking up and down, as it does when a bear tries to
+steal a message from the air. A moment he poised there, a statue of
+ebony against the crimson moss; then he leaped a bogan with surprising
+agility, and came at his easy, shuffling gait around a bend of the
+shore. Opposite me he sat down to cock his nose at the sky, twisting
+his head as he followed the motion of something above him, which I
+could not see,—a hornet, perhaps, or a troublesome fly that persisted
+in buzzing about his ears. Twice he struck quickly with a paw,
+apparently missing the lively thing overhead; for he jumped up, rushed
+ahead violently and spun around on the pivot of his toes. Then he
+settled soberly to his flat-footed shuffle once more, and disappeared
+in a clump of larches, which seemed to open a door for him as he drew
+near.
+
+For me that little comedy was never repeated, though I saw many another
+on dark days or bright; and the last time I visited my pond I beheld it
+sadly altered, its beauty vanished, its shores flooded, its green trees
+stark and dead. Unknown to me, however, the mind had made its
+photographic record, and always I see my pond, as on that perfect day,
+in its setting of misty-green larches and crimson bog. Again its quiet
+face changes, like a human face at pleasant thoughts, and over it comes
+to me the odor of sweet-scented grass. The sunshine brightens it; the
+clouds shadow it; brilliant dragon-flies play among its bending reeds;
+the same brood of ducklings glides in or out from bogan to grassy
+bogan; and forever the bear, big and glossy black, goes shuffling along
+the farther shore.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+LARCH-TREES AND DEER
+
+
+One of the subtler charms of my pond, a thing felt rather than seen,
+was a certain air of secrecy which seldom left it. In every wilderness
+lake lurks a mystery of some kind, which you cannot hope to
+penetrate,—a sense of measureless years, of primal far-off things, of
+uncouth creatures dead and gone that haunted its banks before the
+infancy of man; but on this little pond, with its sunny waters and open
+shore, the mystery was always pleasant, and at times provoking, as if
+it might be the place where an end of the rainbow rested.
+
+Though small enough to give one a sense of possession (one can never
+feel that he owns a big lake, or anything else which gives an
+impression of grandeur or sublimity), my pond had a mischievous way of
+hinting, when you were most comfortable, that it was hiding a secret;
+that it might show you, if it would, a much better scene than that you
+looked upon. It was shaped somewhat like an immense pair of spectacles,
+having two lobes that were flashing bright, with a narrow band of
+darker water between; and, what with its bending shores or intervening
+larches, you could never see the whole of it from any one place. So,
+like eyes that hide their subtlest lights of whim or fancy under
+glasses, it often seemed to be holding something in reserve, something
+which it would not reveal unless you searched for it. After watching
+awhile from one beautiful or restful spot, you began to feel or imagine
+that some comedy was passing unseen on the other half of the pond; and
+though you resisted the feeling at first, sooner or later you crept
+through the screen of larches to know if it were true.
+
+On every side of the pond save one, where a bank of evergreen made
+velvet shadows intermingled with spots of heavenly blue, the shores
+were thickly spread with mosses, which began to color gloriously in
+midsummer, the colors deepening as the season waned, till the
+reflecting water appeared as the glimmering center of a gorgeous
+Oriental rug. Along the edges of this rug, as a ragged fringe, stood
+groups of larches in irregular order,—little fairylike larches that
+bore their crown of leaves not as other trees bear them, heavily, but
+as a floating mist or nebula of sage green. Like New England ladies of
+a past age they seemed, each wearing a precious lace shawl which gave
+an air of daintiness to their sterling worth. When the time came for
+the leaves to fall, instead of rustling down to earth with a sound of
+winter, mournfully, they would scamper away on a merry wind, mingling
+their fragrance with that of the ripened grass; and then the twigs
+appeared plainly for the first time, with a little knot or twist in
+every twig, like toil-worn fingers that the lace had concealed.
+
+Here or there amid this delicate new growth towered the ruin of a
+mighty tamarack, or ship-knee larch, such as men sought in the old
+clipper-ship days when they needed timbers lighter than oak, and even
+tougher to resist the pressure of the gale or the waves’ buffeting.
+Once, before the shipmen penetrated thus far into the wilderness, the
+tamaracks stood here in noble array, their heads under clouds,
+beckoning hungry caribou to feed from the lichens that streamed from
+their broad arms above the drifted snow; now most of them are under the
+moss, which covered them tenderly when they fell. The few remaining
+ones stand as watch-towers for the hawks and eagles; their broken
+branches make strange sepia drawings of dragon-knots and hooked beaks
+on the blue sky. A tiny moth killed all these great larches; the
+caribou moved northward, leaving the country, and the deer moved in to
+take possession.
+
+This and many other stories of the past my little pond told me, as I
+watched from its shores or followed the game-trails that were spread
+like a net about its edges. Back in the woods these trails wandered
+about in devious fashion, seeking good browse or easy traveling; while
+here or there a faint outgoing branch offered to lead you, if your eyes
+were keen, to the distant ridge where a big buck had his daily
+loafing-place. On the bog the trails went more circumspectly, uniting
+at certain places in a single deep path, a veritable path of ages,
+which was the only path that might safely be followed by any creature
+with more weight than a fox. The moment you ventured away from it the
+ground began to shiver, to quake alarmingly, to sink down beneath your
+feet. Only a thin mat of roots kept you afloat; the roots might
+anywhere part and drop you into black bottomless ooze, and close
+forever over your head. A queer place, one might think, for heavy
+beasts to gather, and so it was; but the old caribou-trails or new
+deer-paths offered every one of them safe footing.
+
+At first these game-trails puzzled me completely, being so many and so
+pointless. That they were in constant use was evident from the
+footprints in them, which were renewed almost every morning; yet I
+never once saw a deer approach the water to drink or feed. Something
+else attracted them; a highway from one feeding-ground to another, it
+might be, or the wider outlook which brings deer and caribou out of
+their dim woods to sightly places; but there was no certainty in the
+matter until the animals themselves revealed the secret. One day, when
+a young buck passed my hiding-place as if he were going somewhere, I
+followed him to the upper or southern end of the pond. There he joined
+four other deer, which were very busy about a certain spot, half hidden
+by low bushes, a couple of hundred yards back from the shore. And there
+they stayed, apparently eating or drinking, for a full half-hour or
+more.
+
+When the deer were gone away, I went over and found a huge spring, to
+which converged a dozen deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel
+it seemed: the radiating paths were the spokes, and somewhere beyond
+the horizon was the unseen rim. From the depths of the spring came a
+surprising volume of clear, coffee-colored water, bubbling over
+joyously as it leaped from the dark earth into the light, and then
+stealing quietly away under bending grasses to keep my pond brim full.
+Around the spring the earth was pitted by the feet of deer, and
+everywhere about its edges were holes lapped in the peat by eager
+tongues. Here, beyond a doubt, was what called so many animals to my
+pond,—a mineral spring or salt-lick, such as we read about in stories
+of pioneer days, when game was everywhere abundant, but such as one now
+rarely finds.
+
+After that happy discovery I shifted my blind to another larch with
+low-drooping branches, beneath which one might rest comfortably and
+look out through a screen of lace upon a gathering of the deer. They
+are creatures of habit as well as of freedom; and one of their habits
+is to rest at regular intervals, the hours being hard to forecast,
+since they vary not only with the season of lengthening or shortening
+days, but also each month with the changes of the moon. Thus, when the
+moon fulls and weather is clear, deer are abroad most of the night. At
+dawn they seek their day-beds, instinctively removing far from where
+they have left their scent in feeding; and during the day they are apt
+to remain hidden save for one brief hour, when they take a comforting
+bite here or there, giving the impression that they eat now from habit
+rather than from hunger. As the moon wanes they change their hours to
+take advantage of its shining; and on the “dark of the moon” they
+browse only in the early part of the night, then rest many hours, and
+have two periods of feeding or roaming the next day.
+
+Such seems to be the rule in the North, with plenty of exceptions to
+keep one guessing,—as in the November mating-season, when bucks are
+afoot at all hours; or during a severe storm, which keeps deer and all
+other wild animals close in their coverts.
+
+Because of this regularity of habit at irregular hours, the only
+certainty about the salt-lick was that the animals would come if one
+waited long enough. As I watched expectantly from my larch bower, the
+morning shadows might creep up to me, halt, and lengthen away on the
+other side, while not a deer showed himself in the open. Then there
+would be a stir in the distant larches, a flash of bright color; a doe
+would emerge from one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps
+as she neared the spring. As my eyes followed her, noting with pleasure
+her graceful poses, her unwearied alertness, her frequent turning of
+the head to one distant spot in the woods where she had left her fawn,
+there would come another flash of color from another trail, then two or
+three in a flecking of light and shadow, till half a dozen or more deer
+were gathered at the lick, some lapping the mud eagerly, others
+sipping, sipping, as if they could never have enough of the water.
+After a time they would slip away as they had come, singly or in
+groups; the spring would be deserted, and one could never tell how many
+hours or days might pass before another company began to gather.
+
+However eager for salt they might be, the deer came or went in that
+mysteriously silent way of theirs, appearing without warning in one
+trail, or vanishing down another without a sound to mark their passing.
+Now and then, however, especially if one watched at the exquisite
+twilight hour, a very different entrance might be staged on the lonely
+bog,—a gay, prancing “here I come: get out of the way” kind of
+entrance, which made one glad he had stayed to witness it. On the slope
+of the nearest ridge your eye would catch an abrupt motion, the upward
+surge of a bough or the spring-back of a smitten bush; presently to
+your ears would come a rapid thudding of earth, or a sqush, sqush,
+sqush of water; the larches would burst open and a buck leap forth,
+flourishing broad antlers or kicking up mad heels as he went gamboling
+down the game-trail. If other deer were at the spring, they would throw
+up their heads, set their ears at the dancing buck, take a last quick
+sip from the spring, and move aside as he jumped in to muzzle the mud
+as if famished. For it was the mud rather than the water which first
+claimed his attention, no doubt because it held more of the magic salt.
+He often gave the impression, as he approached in high feather, that he
+had been tasting the stuff in anticipation and could hardly wait to get
+his tongue into it.
+
+The first time I saw that frisky performance I went over to taste the
+mud for myself, but found little to distinguish it from the mud of any
+other peat-bog. The water from the spring was wholesome, with a faint
+taste of something I could not name; and I drank it repeatedly without
+learning its secret. That it held a charm of some kind, which chemistry
+might reveal, was evident from the fact that deer came from miles
+around to enjoy its flavor. Some of the trails could be traced clear
+across the bog to distant ridges and a broken country beyond; and in
+following these trails, to learn what creatures used them and where
+they came from, I repeatedly came upon a deer asleep in his day-bed.
+Whether the animals couched here before drinking at the spring, or
+after drinking, or “just by happentry” I could not tell.
+
+Once the sleeper was a buck with noble antlers. He was resting beside a
+great log on the edge of an opening, half surrounded by dense fir
+thickets. I speak of him as asleep; but that is mere habit of speech or
+poverty of language. Of a score of wild birds or beasts that I have
+found “asleep” in the woods, not one seemed to lose touch with the
+waking world even for an instant. The buck’s eyelids were blinking, his
+head nodding heavily; yet all the while his feet were curled in
+readiness for an instant jump; and somehow those expressive feet gave
+the impression of being as wide awake as a squirrel. Occasionally as I
+watched him, fascinated by the rare sight, his head would drop almost
+to the ground, only to be jerked up with an air of immense surprise;
+then the sleepy fellow would stare in a filmy, unseeing, “who said I
+was asleep” kind of way at a little tree that stood in the opening. The
+stare would end with a slow closing of the eyelids, and in a moment he
+would be nodding again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+BLACK MALLARDS
+
+
+Next to the deer, the wild ducks were the chief attraction of my pond.
+Indeed, they might well be placed first, since they were always at home
+there, and much of the time engaged in one or another of the little
+comedies that make ducks the most amusing of all birds. Eight summers
+in succession, and again after an interval of two years, I found my
+pond occupied by a pair of black mallards with their brood; and I
+fancied, since migratory birds return to the place of their birth, and
+their nestlings after them, that one of the pair was the lineal
+descendant of ducks that had held the place in undisputed possession
+for tens of thousands of years. Here was a succession, modest like all
+true nobility, which made the proud family trees of Mayflower folk or
+English kings or Norman barons look like young berry-bushes in the
+shade of a towering pine.
+
+Until late midsummer the family had the pond all to themselves. Never a
+stranger-duck appeared to share or challenge their heritage; while day
+after day the mother watched over the little brood as they fed or
+played or learned the wild-duck signals. Like our dogs, every manner of
+beast or bird has its own tribal ways or customs, some of which do not
+appear in the young until they begin to roam abroad or to mingle with
+their kind. So, as I watched the brood emerge from down to
+pin-feathers, there would come a red-letter day when two of them,
+meeting as they rounded a grassy point, would raise their wings as if
+in salutation; and a later day when, the pin-feathers having grown to
+fair plumage, their young cheepings or whistlings would change to a
+decided quack.
+
+Thereafter their talk was endlessly entertaining, if one took the
+trouble to creep near enough to appreciate its modulations, expressive
+of every emotion between drowsiness and tense alarm; for it cannot be
+heard, except as a meaningless sound, beyond a few yards. The little
+hen-ducks got on famously, having the mother’s quacking as a model; but
+male ducks cannot or will not learn to quack, and since a male voice
+was rarely heard on the pond at this season, each little drake was a
+law unto himself, and made a brave show of his liberty. Climbing on a
+tussock, as if for more room, he would stretch his wings, make odd
+motions with his neck, and finally pump out a funny wheekle, wheekle,
+as if he had swallowed a whistle.
+
+Meanwhile the old drake and father of the family was seldom about; only
+two or three times did I see him enter the pond, stay a brief while,
+and then wing away over the tree-tops in the direction of a larger
+lake, some three miles to the eastward. On that lake there was never a
+brood of young ducks, so far as I could learn; but when trout-fishing
+there I often surprised the drake, at times taking precious care of his
+own skin in solitude, again clubbing sociably with three or four other
+drakes, who had run away each from a family and the cares thereof on
+some other lonely pond.
+
+As the summer waned, a new sound of quacking, joyous and exultant,
+would greet me when I drew near my pond. Creeping to my blind under the
+larches, I would find a second brood making merry acquaintance with the
+family I had watched over; then a third and a fourth company of
+strangers, as young ducks of all that region began to traffic about in
+preparation for the autumn flight. A little later the flocks fairly
+reveled in sociability, gathering here or there with increasing
+numbers, till on a late-September day I might find my pond deserted,
+the owners being on a visit elsewhere, or I might catch breath at sight
+of so many ducks that I could not accurately count them or distinguish
+one brood from another.
+
+At such a time my little pond seemed to awaken, to shed its silence
+like a garment, to put on its most animated expression, as at a happy
+festival or family reunion. The air was never still from the gabble of
+meeting groups (probably all more or less related), or from the
+resounding quank, quank, quank of some old gossip who went about
+proclaiming her opinion to the whole company. Everywhere the still
+water was broken into undulating wakes as the drakes swept grandly over
+it, with that rhythmic, forward-and-back motion of their heads which is
+like duck poetry,—a motion that is not seen when the birds are feeding,
+but only when they are well satisfied with themselves or their
+audience. Through the shadows under the bank glided knots or ribbons of
+young birds which had not yet quite satisfied their appetites, some
+exploring every crevice for ripened seeds, others tip-tilting their
+tails to the blue sky as they probed the bottom for water-bugs and
+other titbits. In an open space a solitary hen-duck bobbed and teetered
+ecstatically, dipping the fore part of her body under, then heaving it
+up quickly so as to send the cleansing water in a foamy wave over her
+back and wings. Here or there on a tussock stood a quiet group of the
+splendid birds, oiling their glossy feathers, setting a wing-cover just
+right, or adding some other last touch to an elaborate toilet before
+settling down for a nap.
+
+The glassy water reflected every form, color, motion of these
+untroubled ducks as in a glass, doubling the graceful effect. Around
+them stretched the gloriously colored bog; and beyond the bog were the
+nebulous-green larches, the somber black growth and the lifting hills,
+on which autumn had laid its golden touch. Truly a beautiful sight, a
+sight to make the heart of hunter or naturalist tremble with expectancy
+as he fingered his gun. I have known that trembling, that expectancy;
+but there was greater pleasure, perhaps greater freedom also, in
+leaving the happy comedy undisturbed.
+
+Because of its solitude, its utter wildness, my pond seemed to be the
+chosen resting-place of the flocks on an autumn day (they feed or
+travel mostly by night), and perhaps for the same reason the ducks that
+frequented it were among the wildest creatures I have ever tried to
+stalk. A black mallard is not an easy bird to outwit at any time or
+place; but here some magic mirror or sounding-board seemed to
+supplement his natural eyes or ears. The slightest unnatural voice or
+appearance, the snap of a twig or the quiver of a leaf or the glimpse
+of a face in the larches, would send a flock away on the instant; and
+sometimes, when I was sure no sound or motion of mine had broken the
+perfect quiet, they would take wing in such incomprehensible fashion as
+to leave me wondering what extra sense had warned them of danger.
+
+Several times in the course of a summer, when I wanted to observe the
+little duck family more nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer
+play that I could not understand from a distance, I would creep out of
+the larches unseen, worming my way along a sunken deer-path, and
+stopping whenever heads were turned in my direction. One might think it
+an easy matter to approach any game by such methods; yet almost
+invariably, before I could be safe behind a bush or a tuft of grass at
+the water’s edge, the old mother-duck would become uneasy, like a deer
+that catches a vague hint of you floating far down the wind. That she
+could not see or hear me was certain; that she could not smell me I had
+repeatedly proved; nevertheless, after searching the shores narrowly
+she would stretch her neck straight up from the water, as if attentive
+to some wireless message in the air.
+
+A wild duck does not take that alert attitude unless she is suspicious;
+and a curious thing was, that though the mother was silent, uttering
+never a word, the young would crouch and remain motionless wherever
+they happened to be. Suddenly, as if certain of danger but unable to
+locate it, the mother would spring aloft to go sweeping in wide circles
+over the bog. She seemed to know it by heart, every pool and bump and
+shadow of it; and when her keen eyes picked up an unfamiliar shadow on
+a certain deer-path she would come at it with a rush, whirling over it
+in an upward-climbing spiral till she became sure of me, as of
+something out of place, when she would speed away with a warning note
+over the tree-tops. If the young were strong of wing, they would follow
+her swiftly, giving wide berth to the deer-path as if she had told them
+beware of it; but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air, they
+would skulk away, their heads down close to the water, and hide in one
+of the grassy bogans of the pond, where because of the quaking shore it
+was impossible to come near them.
+
+Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited till the ducklings had
+been some minutes hidden before creeping back to my blind in the
+larches. An hour or more passed in the timeless quiet; while the water
+became as glass under the afternoon sun, and a deer moved near the
+hidden brood without flushing them or even bringing a head up where I
+could see it. Then the mother returned, calling as she came; and the
+first thing she did was to circle warily over the same deer-path,
+stretching her neck down for a close inspection. “Aha! that thing is
+gone, but where?” she said in every line and motion of her inquisitive
+head or pulsating wings, as she sped away to find the answer.
+
+Twice she circled the bog, her eyes searching every cranny and shadow
+of it. From her high flight she slanted straight down and pitched fair
+in the middle of the pond, where for some moments she sat motionless,
+her head up, looking, listening,—a perfect image of alertness in the
+midst of wildness. Satisfied at last that no trouble was near, she
+turned to the shore with a low call; and out of the bogan pell-mell
+rushed the little ones, splashing, cheeping, half lifting themselves
+with their tiny wings as they scurried over the water to join the
+mother. For a full hour I had kept my glasses almost continuously on
+that bogan; then with divided attention I cast expectant glances at it
+when I heard the mother’s incoming note, the whish of her wings as she
+circled the bog and the splash as she took the water; but not till the
+right signal came did I see a motion or a sign of life from the hidden
+brood.
+
+The pond was shaped, as we have noticed, like a pair of spectacles; and
+a favorite place for the autumn flock to rest or preen or sleep was at
+the bend between the two lobes. Down into that bend ran a screen of
+alder-bushes, the only good cover between woods and water on the entire
+pond; and it was so dense that a cat could hardly have crept through it
+without making a disturbance. That was one reason, I suppose, why the
+ducks felt safe at the outer end of the tangle: they could see
+everything in front or on either side, and hear anything that moved
+behind them.
+
+One day, when the shore at this bend was freshly starred by ducks’ feet
+and littered with feathers, showing that a large flock had just left
+the roost, I began at the fringe of larches and cut a passageway, a
+regular beaver’s tunnel, down the whole length of the alder run, making
+an end in a point of grass, where the water came close on three sides.
+One had to consider only the birds’ keen ears, the alder screen being
+so thick that not even a duck’s eye could penetrate it; therefore I
+smoothed the way most carefully, leaving no stick below to crack under
+my weight, and no branch reaching down to rustle or quiver as I crawled
+beneath it. When the tunnel was well finished I left the pond to its
+solitude a few days, thinking that the birds would surely notice some
+telltale sign of my work, some fresh-cut stick or wilted bough that my
+eyes had overlooked, and be wary of the alders for a little time.
+
+And why such pains to get near a bird, you ask, since one might better
+observe or shoot him from a comfortable distance? Oh, just a notion of
+mine, an odd notion, which can hardly be appreciated till one has
+proved it in the open. As you can seldom “feel” the quality of a
+stranger while he remains even a few yards away, so with any wild bird
+or beast: there is an impression arising from nearness, from contact,
+which cannot be had in any other way; and that swift impression, which
+is both physical and mental, a judgment as it were of the entire
+nature, is often more illuminating than hours of ordinary observation
+or speculation.
+
+Such an impression is not new or strange, or even modernly
+psychological. On the contrary, it is the simplest matter in the world
+of sense, I think, and perhaps also the surest. Most animals have a
+significant way of touching their noses to one of their own kind at
+meeting; not to smell him, as we imagine (they can smell him, or even
+his tracks, at a distance), but in order to receive a more intimate or
+convincing message than the sense of smell can furnish. Likewise, a man
+naturally pats the head of a dog, or fingers an object after minutely
+scanning it with his eyes; and in this instinctive action is the
+ancient touch of recognition. Touch is the oldest and most universal of
+the bodily senses, sight, smell, taste and hearing being later
+specializations thereof; by it the living creature first became aware
+of a world outside of self; and to it we all return for verification of
+our sense impressions. Therefore it happens most naturally that,
+despite warning signs or penalties, thoughtless men will put their
+hands into the bear or monkey cage, where animals are no longer natural
+or to be trusted, and our children must be forever lectured, or
+sometimes spanked, for handling things which they have been told to let
+alone.
+
+Besides, when one is very near a strange bird or beast, one becomes
+vaguely conscious of an extra sense at work,—that real but uncatalogued
+sense-of-presence (to coin a name for it) which makes two persons in a
+room aware of each other at every instant, even while both are absorbed
+in quiet work or reading. The “feel” of the same room when one occupies
+it alone is very different; and the difference may help to explain why
+gregarious animals are uncomfortable, uneasy, unless they are near
+their own kind,—near enough, that is, not simply to hear or see them
+but to feel their bodily presence. A herd-animal is always restless,
+and often sickens, if his herd is not close about him. The same
+mysterious sense (mysterious to us, because we do not yet know the
+organ through which it works) often warns the solitary man in the woods
+or in the darkness that some living creature is near him, at a moment
+when his eyes or ears are powerless to verify his impression.
+
+But that is another and more subtle matter, familiar enough to a few
+sensitive persons and natural woodsmen, but impossible of demonstration
+to others; you cannot explain color to a man born blind. The simple
+answer is, that for my own satisfaction I wanted to touch one of the
+wary birds of my pond, as I had before touched eagle and crow, bear and
+deer, and many another wild creature in his native woods. Such was the
+notion. In other places I had several times tried to indulge it; but
+save in one instance, when I found a winter flock weakened by hunger, I
+had never laid my hand fairly on a black mallard when he had the free
+use of his wits and wings.
+
+When I returned to my pond, and from a distance swept my glasses over
+it, the water was alive with ducks; never before had I seen so many
+there at one time. Single large birds, the drakes undoubtedly, were
+moving leisurely over the open spaces. Groups of five or six, each a
+brood from some neighboring pond, were gliding in an exploring kind of
+way under the banks or through the weed-beds; and scattered along the
+shore at the end of the alder run were wisps or companies of the birds,
+all preening or dozing with an air of complete security. Here at last
+was my chance, my perfect chance, I told myself, as I carefully marked
+one brood standing at the tip of the grassy point where my tunnel
+ended.
+
+More carefully than ever I stalked a bear, I circled through the black
+growth, crept under the fringe of larches, and entered the alder run
+unobserved. Inch by inch I wormed along the secret passageway, flat to
+the ground, not once raising my head, hardly daring to pull a full
+breath, till, just as I emerged from the alder shade into the grass, a
+gamy scent in my nose and a low gabble in my ears told me that I was
+almost near enough, that the birds were all around me, and that for the
+rest of the way I must move as a shadow.
+
+From under my hat-brim I located the gabblers, a large family of black
+mallards outside the fringe of grass on my left. They were abreast of
+me, not more than five or six feet away. I had not marked these birds
+when I began my stalk; they were hidden in a tiny cove or bend of the
+shore, and had it not been for their voices I would surely have crept
+past without seeing them. At the mouth of the cove was a single
+tussock, on which stood the mother-duck, wavering between dreams and
+watchfulness as the sunshine poured full upon her, making her very
+sleepy. On the bare earth beneath her the others were getting ready for
+a nap, so near that I could see every motion, the settling of a head,
+the blink of an eyelid. Occasionally through the tangle of grass stems
+came the penetrating gleam of their eyes,—marvelously bright eyes,
+alert and intelligent.
+
+For several minutes I held motionless, still flat to the ground,
+listening to the sleepy talk, admiring the mottled-brown plumage of a
+breast or the bar of brilliant color drawn athwart a sooty wing. All
+the while my nose was trying to get in a warning word, telling me to
+give heed that the ducky odor which flowed in waves over the whole
+point was different from this strong reek, as of a disturbed nest, in
+the near-by grass; but my eyes were so occupied that I paid no
+attention to other senses. As the duck on the tussock at last settled
+down to sleep and I worked my toes into the earth for a noiseless push
+forward, there was a slight but startling motion almost at my shoulder.
+A neck was raised and twisted sleepily, as if to get the kink out of
+it; and the thrill of success ran over me as I made out another and
+nearer group of ducks. They were under the bank and the bending grass,
+where I had completely overlooked them. Every one was within reach; and
+every one I could see had his head drawn in or tucked away under his
+wing.
+
+Slowly my left hand stole toward them, creeping forward in the
+deliberate fashion of a measuring-worm, first the fingers stretched,
+then the knuckles raised, then out with the fingers again. It would
+have been very easy to stroke or to catch one of the birds by a swift
+motion; but that was not what I wanted, and would have instantly
+spoiled the whole comedy. For the right effect, the hand must rest upon
+a duck before he was aware of it, so quietly that at first he would
+give his attention to the hand itself, not to the thing it came from.
+Then he would probably give it a questioning peck, examine it
+curiously, and finally grow indifferent to it, as other birds had done
+when I touched them from hiding. But here my head was too close to the
+ground, and my body too cramped for easy action. As my hand reached the
+edge of the bank, just over an unconscious duck, it ran into a tuft of
+saw-grass, which cut my fingers and rustled dangerously. To clear this
+obstruction I drew back slightly, lifted up a grain; and in my other
+ear, which was turned away, a resonant voice cried Quock! with a
+challenge that broke the tension like a pistol-shot.
+
+Involuntarily I turned my head, just when I should have held most
+still; and so I lost my chance. There, at arm’s-length on the other
+side of the point, a wild-eyed duck was looking over the bank, her neck
+stretched like a taut string, her olive-colored bill pointing straight
+at me. She never said another word, and had no need to repeat her
+challenge. All over the point and along the shore necks were stretched
+up from the grass; a dozen alert forms rose like sentinels from as many
+tussocks, and forty pairs of keen eyes were every one searching the
+spot at which the old hen-duck pointed her accusation.
+
+For a small moment that tableau lasted, without a sound, without a
+motion; while one was conscious only of the tense necks, the pointing
+bills, the gleaming little eyes, each with its diamond-point of light;
+and then the old duck took wing. She did not even crouch to jump, so
+far as I could follow her motion; she simply went into the air like a
+rocket, shooting aloft as if hurled from a spring. As she rose, there
+was an answering rush of wings, whoosh! in my very ears, a surge as of
+smitten water in the distance; and in the same fraction of an instant
+every duck to the farthest ends of the pond was up and away in a wild
+tumult of quacking.
+
+Only one of these birds had seen me, and that one probably had no
+notion of what she had glimpsed in the grass. It was a round thing with
+eyes, and it moved a second time—that was enough for the old hen-duck,
+and the others did not stop to ask any questions.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MEMORIES
+
+
+Two full years passed before I returned to my pond on a sunny September
+day, in my mind’s eye seeing it smile a welcome, hearing it cry, “Lo
+here! Lo there!” and planning, as I came down the silent trail, how I
+would accept all its invitations. First, the salt-lick must be spied
+out from a distance; and the examination would tell me whether to keep
+on down my own trail or, if the lick were occupied, to branch off by a
+certain game-path, which would lead me to the blind where I had so
+often watched the deer unseen. Next, I would have a restful look at a
+mound of moss swelling above the bog near a certain tamarack, which
+always showed the first blush of crimson in midsummer, and which became
+in autumn like a gorgeous bed of Dutch tulips, only more wondrously
+colored. Then I would look into the doorway under the larches, where my
+bear had disappeared. I always picked that out from a hundred similar
+doorways to watch or question it a moment, as if at any time the green
+curtain might open to let the bear out. For a curious thing about all
+woodsmen is this: if they see a buck or a bear or even a fox enter a
+certain place, they must forever afterward stop to have another
+expectant look at it.
+
+From the bear’s doorway my thoughts turned naturally to a little bogan
+of my pond, which was different from all the other bogans, because once
+a family of minks darted out of it and came dodging along the shore in
+my direction. Luckily I was close to the water at that moment. While
+the minks were out of sight under some bushes, I swung my feet over the
+bank and sat down in their path to wait for them.
+
+In advance came the mother, looking rusty in her sunburnt summer coat,
+and she was evidently in a great hurry about something. The little
+ones, trailing out behind, were hard put to it to keep up the pace. She
+was fairly under me before she noticed a new scent in the air, which
+made her halt to look about for the meaning of it. Her neck was lifted,
+weasel-fashion, to thrice its ordinary length; at the end of it her
+pointed head swung like a vane to the bank, to the pond, to the bank
+again; while her busy nose wiggled out its sharp questions. Probably
+she had no notion of man, never having met the creature; neither did
+she associate the motionless figure above her with life or danger. She
+passed directly over one of my shoes, halted with her paws raised
+against the other, and scampered on as if she had no use for such
+trifles.
+
+Before the little ones arrived I half turned to meet them, spreading my
+feet so as to leave a narrow passageway between the heels; and over
+this, as a cover, rested my hand, making a shadowy runway such as minks
+like. When the kits entered it, sleek and glossy and half grown, I
+touched them lightly on the neck, feeling the soft brush of fur and the
+ripple of elastic muscles as one after another glided under my finger,
+with no more concern than if it had been one of the roots among which
+they were accustomed to creep. But when the last one came I blocked the
+runway by placing a hand squarely across it, stopping him short in
+great astonishment. He sniffed at the obstruction, and his nose was
+like a point of ice as it wandered over my palm. Then he tried a finger
+with his teeth, wriggled under it to follow his leader, and the whole
+family disappeared in a twisting, snakelike procession around the next
+bend. These were wild animals, remember; and ounce for ounce there is
+no more “savage” beast in the woods than Cheokhes the mink.
+
+As with birds or beasts, so also with the trees about my pond: somehow
+they seemed different from all other trees, perhaps because of more
+intimate association; for though all the cedars or hemlocks of a forest
+look alike to a stranger, no sooner do you spend days alone among them
+than you begin to have a curious feeling of individuality, of
+comradeship, of understanding even, as if they were not wholly dumb or
+insensate. It was inevitable, therefore, as I came down the trail,
+recalling this or that tree under which I had often passed or rested,
+that certain of them stood forth in memory as having given me pleasure
+or greeting in the lonely woods, just as certain faces emerge from the
+sea of faces in a crowd or a great audience of strangers, and instantly
+make one feel his kinship to humanity.
+
+Foremost among these memorable trees was a great white-pine, to me the
+noblest of all forest growths, which stood on a knoll to westward of my
+pond, on the way to camp, and which always seemed to cry hail or
+farewell as I came or went. It had a stem to make one wonder, almost to
+make one reverent. Massive, soft-colored, finely reticulated it was;
+wide as the span of a man’s arms, and rising near a hundred feet
+without knot or branch,—a glorious upspringing shaft, immensely strong,
+yet delicate in its poise as a lance in rest. From the top of the shaft
+rugged arms were stretched out above the tallest trees, and on these
+rested lightly as a cloud its crown of green. Like others that overtop
+their fellows, the old pine had paid the penalty of greatness.
+Whirlwinds that left lower trees untouched had stripped it of half its
+branches; lightning had leaped upon it from the clouds, leaving a
+spiral scar from crown to foot; but the wound which threatened its
+death was meanwhile its life, because the lumbermen, seeing the
+lightning’s mark, had passed on and left the pine in its solitary
+grandeur.
+
+When I first saw that tree I changed the trail so as to pass beneath
+it; and thereafter it was like a living presence, benign and friendly,
+beside the way. To lay a hand on its mighty stem, as one passed
+eastward in the early morning, was to receive an impression of renewed
+power,—a power which the scornful might attribute to imagination, the
+chemist to electrons or radio-activity, and the simple man to his
+Mother Nature. At evening, as one followed the dim trail homeward in
+the fading light, one had only to look up for a guiding sign; and
+there, solemn and still against the twilight splendor, was the crown of
+the old pine to give direction. Its very silence at such an hour was
+like the Angelus ringing. To halt beneath it, as one often did
+unconsciously, was to feel the spell of its age, its serenity, its
+peace; while harmonious thoughts came or went attuned to the low melody
+of the winds, crooning their vesper song far up among its green leaves.
+And, morning or midday or evening, to look up at the pine’s lofty
+crown, which had tossed in the free winds that bore Pilgrim and Puritan
+westward with their immortal dream of freedom, was to be bound with
+stronger ties of loyalty to the fathers of my native state,—men of
+vision and imagination as well as of stern courage, who heard the pine
+booming out its psalm to the gale and instantly adopted it as their new
+symbol, stamping it on their coins or emblazoning it on their banners
+as an emblem of liberty. Never another symbol, whether dragon or eagle
+or lion, had so much majesty, or was so worthy of free men. The
+remembrance of it in any national crisis or call to duty sets the
+American heart beating to the rhythm of Whittier’s “Pine-Tree”:
+
+
+    Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield,
+    Give to northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered
+        field.
+    Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,
+    Answering England’s royal missive with a firm “Thus saith the
+        Lord,”
+    Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!
+    What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.
+
+
+Very different from the majestic pine was a little larch-tree, under
+which I often sat while watching the deer. As I came down the trail,
+after a year’s absence, it would seem to lift its head and step forth
+from all the other larches, calling out cheerily: “Welcome once more!
+And why so long away? See, here is your old place waiting.” And drawing
+aside the delicate branches, I would find the seat of dry moss and
+springy boughs, the back-rest, the open window with its drapery of
+lace,—everything just as I had left it.
+
+Near this sociable young larch stood its dead ancestor, grim and
+silent, which the moths had killed; and this, too, seemed different
+from all other trees living or dead. On sunny days it threw a straight
+shaft of shadow over my blind; and the shadow moved along the ground
+from west to east, telling the creeping hours like a sun-dial. At the
+tip of the lofty stub a short branch thrust itself out at a right
+angle, and this served as the finger of my strange timepiece. When it
+rested on a bed of brimming pitcher-plants it pointed to the lunch in
+my pocket; when it touched the root of a water-maple it spoke of the
+home trail; and between, at irregular intervals, were a nanny-bush, a
+tuft of wild cotton and a shy orchid to mark the less important hours.
+Once, when I glanced at the slow-moving shadow, it was topped by a
+striking symbolic figure, and looking up quickly I found an eagle
+perched on the outstretched finger of my dial. After that the old
+tamarack had a new dignity in my eyes; it stood on an eagle’s line of
+flight, one of his regular ways in crossing from mountain to lake, and
+from it the kingly-looking bird was wont to survey this part of his
+silent domain, the sun gleaming on his snow-white crest.
+
+A stone’s-throw behind my larch blind was a portly young fir, which I
+could never pass without a smile as it nodded to remind me that it was
+not like other firs. Thousands of these trees, crowding the northern
+forest, seem to be all grown on the same model, like peas in a pod; but
+this one had a character and a history to set it forever apart from its
+kind. And this is the tale which always passed silently between us when
+we met:
+
+One day, as I watched some deer at the salt-lick, they suddenly became
+uneasy, looking and harking about as if for danger, and then vanished
+down the several game-trails. Not till they were gone did I notice that
+the air was ominously still, or understand the cause of the alarm: a
+tempest was coming, and the sensitive animals were away to cover before
+my dull senses had picked up the first warning sign. Soon the landscape
+darkened; the face of my pond became as I had never seen it before;
+thunder growled in the distance; coppery clouds with light flaming
+through them came rolling over the tree-tops; and all nature said, as
+plainly as a fire-bell, “Get to cover, and quickly!”
+
+As I went back into the woods, seeking shelter, a few big drops hit the
+leaves like flails; then came a pause, still as death, and then the
+deluge. Ahead in the gloom I spied a young fir (never pick a tall tree,
+or a solitary tree, in a tempest of lightning) which thrust out a mass
+of feathery branches from a thicket of its fellows. “This for mine,” I
+said as I dived under it, accompanied by a blinding flare of light and
+an ear-splitting crack—and almost ran against the heels of a buck that
+jumped out on the other side. By an odd chance, one in ten thousand, he
+had picked the same fir for shelter, and was no doubt thinking he had
+picked well when I came blundering in with the thunderbolt and drove
+him out into the downpour. “Hold on, old sport! Come back; it’s your
+tree,” I called after him, feeling as if I had stolen a child’s
+umbrella; but he paid no attention.
+
+Thinking he would not go far, and knowing he could hear or smell
+nothing in that rush of rain and crashing of thunder, I crept slowly
+after him. There he was, hunched up in the lee of a big hemlock, ears
+drooping, legs streaming, and little spurts of mist popping up from his
+pelted hide. Though woebegone enough, he had not forgotten caution; oh
+no! trust an old buck for that in any weather. His tail was to the
+tree, his head turned warily to the trail over which he had come. And
+there I left him, wishing as I turned back that he would let me stand
+under his hemlock, or else come and share my fir, just for a little
+company.
+
+Near the lower end of my pond was still another tree which I must
+revisit; yes, surely, not only for its happy memories, but also in
+anticipation of some merry surprise, of which it seemed to have endless
+store. It stood on a bank overlooking a sunny dell in the woods, a
+wonderfully pleasant place where no wind entered, where the air was
+always fragrant, and a runlet of cool water sang a little tune to
+itself all day long. Its gnarled trunk was scarcely more than a shell,
+which boomed like a drum when a woodpecker sounded it; and above were
+hollow limbs with knot-hole entrances, offering hospitality to any wild
+creature in search of a weather-proof den or nesting-place.
+
+The first time I passed this old tree a family of red squirrels were
+laying claim to it in a tiff with some larger beast or bird, which
+slipped away as I approached. The next time I saw it, a year later, it
+was silent and apparently deserted; but as I rose from drinking at the
+runlet the head of a little gray owl appeared at a knot-hole. For full
+ten minutes he remained there motionless, without word or sign or even
+a blink to say that he was watching me, though it was undoubtedly some
+noise or stir of mine which brought him up to his window.
+
+After that I fell in the way of turning aside to loaf awhile under the
+inn-tree; and rarely could one loaf there very long without overhearing
+something not intended for a stranger’s ear, some low dialogue or
+hammering signal or petulant whining or cautious scratching, to remind
+one of the running comedy of the woods. It was evidently an exchange, a
+crossroad or meeting-place for the wood folk, calling in every
+passer-by as a certain store or corner of a sleepy town invites all
+idlers, boys and stray dogs, while other stores or corners are empty,
+save for women folk, and quite respectable.
+
+Once in the late morning, as I sat with an ear to the resonant shell,
+listening to the talk of unseen creatures which I fancied were young
+’coons, a big log-cock flashed into the old tree, drew himself up on a
+stub over my head, and seemed to cock his ear at the voices to which I
+had been listening.
+
+Now the log-cock is naturally a wary bird, shy and difficult of
+approach; but this gorgeous fellow with the scarlet crest became almost
+sociable in his curiosity, perhaps because the place was so quiet, so
+friendly, with no motion or hint of danger to disturb its tranquillity.
+He saw me at once, as the change in his bright eye plainly said; but,
+deceived by my stillness or the sober coloring of my clothes, he set me
+down as a tree-fungus or mushroom that had grown since his last visit,
+and looked about for something more interesting. When I called his
+attention by a curt nod, telling him that this was no dull mushroom, he
+came down at once to light against the side of the tree, where he
+examined my head minutely. Learning nothing from my wink, he went
+around the tree in a series of side-jumps to have a look from the other
+side; then he hopped up and down, this side or that, all the while
+uttering a low surprised chatter. Even when I began to flip bits of
+wood at him (for he soon grew impatient, and interrupted the ’coon talk
+by an unseemly rapping), instead of rushing off in alarm, he twice
+followed a missile that rattled near him, as if to demand, “Well, what
+in the world sent you flying?” Presently he sent forth a call, not the
+loud, high, prolonged note which you hear from him at a distance, but a
+soft, wheedling ah-koo! ah-koo! only twice repeated. When his call was
+answered in a different strain, a questioning strain it seemed to me,
+he darted away and returned within the minute accompanied by another
+log-cock.
+
+But enough of such pictures! They flash joyously upon the mental vision
+whenever one recalls a cherished spot in the woods, but fade quickly if
+one attempts to hold or describe them, saying as they vanish that the
+lure of solitary lakes, the companionship of trees, the fascination of
+wild creatures that hide and look forth with roundly curious eyes at a
+stranger’s approach,—these are matters that can never be set down in
+words: the best always escapes in the telling. I meant only to say
+(when my pine lifted its crown in the light of an evening sky, and then
+the mink family came dodging along the shore of memory, and the buck
+and the log-cock interrupted to urge me be sure and tell the happiest
+part of the story before I made an end) that many pleasant memories
+greeted me as I came down the silent trail after a long absence. In the
+distance sounded a lusty quacking; my imagination painted the mallards
+at the end of the alder run, with sunshiny water and crimson bog and
+misty-green larches around them, as a frame for the picture; and then
+the whole beautiful anticipation came tumbling in ruin about my ears.
+
+Before I reached my pond, before I saw the welcoming gleam of it even,
+I was at every step going over my shoetops in water, where formerly I
+had always found dry footing. Something disastrous had happened in my
+absence; the whole bog was overflowed; around it was no mist of
+delicate foliage but only skeleton trees, stark and pitiful. In my
+heart I was berating the lumbermen, whose ugly works are the ruination
+of every place they visit, when at last I waded to an opening that gave
+outlook on my pond; and the first thing I noticed, as my eyes swept the
+familiar scene, was a beaver-house cocked up on the shore, like a
+warning sign of new ownership.
+
+It is true that blessings brighten as they take their flight: not till
+I read that crude sign of dispossession did I know how much pleasure my
+little pond had given me. The lonely beauty which could quiet a man
+like a psalm, or like an Indian’s wordless prayer; the glimpses of wild
+creatures at home and unafraid; the succession of radiant pictures, at
+sunny midday, or beneath the hushed twilight, or in the expectant
+morning before the shadows come,—all these had suddenly taken wing,
+driven away by mud-grubbing animals with a notion in their dull heads
+that they wanted deeper water about the site they had chosen for their
+house of sticks. It was too bad, too hopeless! I might have prevented
+the ruin had I known; but now it was beyond all remedy. With a
+different interest, therefore, and still resentful that my pond was
+spoiled as thoroughly as any lumberman would have spoiled it, I made my
+way around the flood to examine the beavers’ work at the outlet.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+BEAVER WORK
+
+
+Hidden among the larches at the lower end of my pond was a tiny
+outgoing stream, which had proved hard to find when first I explored
+the region, and almost impossible to follow afterward. Under a fallen
+log, so weathered and mossy that it seemed part of the natural shore, a
+volume of water escaped without ripple or murmur, wandering away under
+bending grasses to lose itself in an alder swamp, where innumerable
+channels offered it lingering passage. From the swamp it found its way,
+creepingly, among brooding cedars to a little brook, which went singing
+far down through the woods to Upper Pine Pond; and beyond that on the
+farther side was a long dead-water, and then Pine Stream making its
+tortuous way through an untraveled region to the Penobscot. The nearest
+beavers, a colony of four lodges which I unearthed on a hidden branch
+of Pine Stream, were twelve or fifteen miles away, as the water flowed;
+yet over all that distance an exploring family had made its lonely way,
+guided at every turn by the flavor of distant springs, till one after
+another they crept under the fallen log and entered my pond, which was
+solitary enough to satisfy even their pioneer instincts. They had first
+picked a site for their new lodge, on a point overlooking the lower
+half of the pond, and had then gone back to the outlet to raise the
+water.
+
+Their dam was a rare piece of wild engineering; so much I had to
+confess, even while I wished that the beavers had chosen some other
+place to display their craft. Finding where the water escaped, they
+stopped the opening beneath the log, and made a bank of mud and
+alder-brush above it. This bank was carried out a dozen feet or more on
+either side of the stream, the ends being bent forward (toward the pond
+above) so as to make a very fine concave arch. On a small or quiet
+stream like this, beavers almost invariably build a straight dam; and
+where swift water calls for a stronger or curving structure, they
+present the convex side to the current; but here they had reversed both
+rules, for some reason or impulse which I could not fathom,—except on
+the improbable assumption that the animals could foresee the end of
+their work from the beginning. The finished dam was an amazingly good
+one, as you shall see; but whether it resulted from planning or happy
+experiment or just following the water, only a certain old beaver could
+tell.
+
+Since there was no other outlet to my pond, the beavers were obliged to
+build here; but the site was a poor one, the land being uniformly low
+on all sides, and no sooner did they finish their dam than the rising
+water flowed around both ends of it. To remedy this they pushed out a
+curving wing from either end of their first arch, so that the line of
+their dam was now a pretty triple-curve. Again and again the outgoing
+water crept around the obstacle; each time the beavers added other
+curving wings, now on this side, now on that, bending them steadily
+forward till the top of their dam suggested the rim of an enormous
+scallop-shell. Then, finding the water deep enough for their needs,
+they thrust out a straight wing from either end of their dam, resting
+their work on the slopes of two hillocks in the woods, some fifty yards
+apart,—this in a straight line, or across the hinge of the
+scallop-shell: if measured on the curves, their dam was three or four
+times that length. Their next task was to build a lodge on the point
+above; then they dug a canal through the bog to the nearest grove of
+hardwood, and cut down a liberal part of the trees for their winter
+supply of bark. The branches of these trees had been cut into
+convenient lengths, floated through the canal, and stored in a great
+food-pile in the deep water near the lodge.
+
+When I found the dam, several deer (to judge from the tracks) were
+already using the top of it as a runway in passing from the flooded
+ground on one side of the pond to the other. From either end a
+game-trail led upward along the shore, no longer following immemorial
+paths over the bog, which was submerged with all its splendor of color,
+but making a new and rougher way through the black growth. When I
+followed one of these trails it led me completely around the pond,
+going confidently till it neared the salt-lick, where it halted,
+wavered and trickled out in aimless wanderings. There, where once the
+ground was trodden smooth by many feet, was now no ground to be seen.
+The precious spring, over which a thousand generations of deer had
+lingered, had vanished in a dull waste of water. Twice I watched the
+place from early morning till owls began to cry the twilight; in that
+time only a few animals appeared, singly, at long intervals; and after
+wandering about as if seeking something and finding it not, they
+disappeared in the dusky woods.
+
+And so I went away, looking for the last time sadly on the little pond,
+as upon a place one has owned and loved, but which has passed into
+other hands. Though the wild ducks still breed or gather there, it is
+no longer the same. There is no restful spot from which to watch the
+waters dance with the wind, or frown at the cloud, or smile at the
+sunshine; the little larches are all dead beside their ancestors; the
+carpet of colored moss is but a memory. When the beavers go to pioneer
+a remoter spot, I shall break their dam and let the water return to its
+ancient level. Then, if happily I live long enough for another fringe
+of larches to grow, and another mossy rug to crimson under the waning
+sun, perhaps it will be my pond once more.
+
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+[1] For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196–199.
+
+[2] Crawford, Thinking Black (1904).
+
+[3] I am speaking of starlings as they now appear in southern New
+England. They were brought from Europe a few years ago, and are
+multiplying at an alarming rate. They have formed some curious new
+habits here; even their voices are very different from the voices of
+starlings as I have heard them in Europe.
+
+[4] In parts of the West, I am told, wolves often kill more than they
+need. Formerly they fed on the abundant game and were wholly natural
+animals; but their habits have changed with a changed environment. When
+the game was destroyed by settlers or hunters the wolves began to feed
+on domestic animals; and the descendants of these wolves, which killed
+right and left in a crowding, excited herd of sheep or cattle, are now
+said to kill deer wantonly when they have the chance. I cannot
+personally verify the saying, and know not whether it rests on
+exceptional or typical observation. In the North, where there are no
+domestic animals, I have rarely known a timber-wolf to kill after his
+hunger was satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW ANIMALS TALK ***
+\ No newline at end of file
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW ANIMALS TALK ***</div>
+<div class="front">
+<div class="div1 cover"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure dustjacket-imagewidth"><img src="images/dustjacket.jpg" alt="Original Dust Jacket (front)." width="540" height="720"></div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div1 cover"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure cover-imagewidth"><img src="images/frontcover.jpg" alt="Original Front Cover." width="552" height="720"></div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div1 frenchtitle"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first center large">HOW ANIMALS TALK
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure halftitlewidth"><img src="images/halftitle.png" alt="Owl." width="137" height="194"></div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div1 frontispiece"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure frontispiecewidth" id="frontispiece"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="The old vixen lies apart where she can overlook the play and the neighborhood." width="495" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>The old vixen lies apart where she can overlook the play and the neighborhood.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div1 titlepage"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure titlepage-imagewidth"><img src="images/titlepage.png" alt="Original Title Page." width="491" height="720"></div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="titlePage">
+<div class="docTitle">
+<h1 class="mainTitle">HOW ANIMALS TALK</h1>
+<h1 class="subTitle"><i>And Other Pleasant Studies of Birds and Beasts</i></h1>
+</div>
+<div class="byline">BY<br>
+<span class="docAuthor"><span class="sc">William J. Long</span></span>
+<br>
+<i>Author of
+“School of the Woods” “Northern Trails”
+“Brier-Patch Philosophy” etc.</i>
+<br>
+<i>Illustrations and Decorations by</i><br>
+<span class="docAuthor">CHARLES COPELAND</span></div>
+<div class="docImprint"><i>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</i><br>
+<i>NEW YORK AND LONDON</i></div>
+</div>
+<p></p>
+<div class="div1 copyright"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first center small"><span class="sc">How Animals Talk</span>
+</p>
+<p class="center small">Copyright 1919 by Harper &amp; Brothers <br>Printed in the United States of America <br>Published August, 1919
+</p>
+<p class="center small">G–T
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="toc" class="div1 contents"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<h2 class="main"><i>Contents</i></h2>
+<table class="tocList">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum xs">CHAP.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle">
+</td>
+<td class="tocPageNum xs">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">I.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch1" id="xd32e185"><span class="sc">A Little Dog-Comedy</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">3</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">II.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch2" id="xd32e195"><span class="sc">Cries of the Day and Night</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">10</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">III.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch3" id="xd32e205"><span class="sc">Chumfo, the Super-sense</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">34</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">IV.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch4" id="xd32e215"><span class="sc">Natural Telepathy</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">74</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">V.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch5" id="xd32e225"><span class="sc">The Swarm Spirit</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">111</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">VI.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch6" id="xd32e235"><span class="sc">Where Silence Is Eloquent</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">137</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">VII.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch7" id="xd32e245"><span class="sc">On Getting Acquainted</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">175</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch8" id="xd32e255"><span class="sc">On Keeping Still</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">195</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">IX.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch9" id="xd32e265"><span class="sc">At Close Range</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">211</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">X.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch10" id="xd32e275"><span class="sc">The Trail</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">237</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">XI.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch11" id="xd32e286"><span class="sc">Woodsy Impressions</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">247</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">XII.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch12" id="xd32e296"><span class="sc">Larch-trees and Deer</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">256</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">XIII.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch13" id="xd32e306"><span class="sc">Black Mallards</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">266</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">XIV.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch14" id="xd32e316"><span class="sc">Memories</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">283</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum">XV.</td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"> <a href="#ch15" id="xd32e326"><span class="sc">Beaver Work</span></a> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">298</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div1 last-child contents"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<h2 class="main"><i>Illustrations</i></h2>
+<table class="tocList">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#frontispiece">The Old Vixen Lies Apart Where She Can Overlook the Play and the Neighborhood</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum"><i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p020">He Flings Out a Single “Haw!” and the Ducks Spring Aloft on the Instant and Head Swiftly
+Out to Sea</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum"><i>Facing p.</i> 20</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p054">A Shadow Moved from the Darker Shadow of an Upturned Root—and a Great Buck Stood Alert
+on the Open Shore</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">54</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p102">They Stood Tense as They Searched the Plain and Surrounding Woods for the Source of
+Danger</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">102</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p166">The Course He Took Was Entirely Different from That Taken by the Man Who Brought the
+Vixen Home</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">166</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p192">So Innocent and So Appealing that It is Hard to Keep Your Hands from Him</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">192</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p252">His Massive Head Thrust Forward as He Tried to Penetrate the Far Distance with His
+Near-sighted Eyes</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">252</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocDivNum"></td>
+<td class="tocDivTitle"><span class="sc"><a href="#p270">At Such a Time My Pond Seemed to Awaken and Shed Its Silence Like a Garment</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tocPageNum">270</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><span class="pageNum" id="pb1">[<a href="#pb1">1</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="body">
+<div class="div0 part">
+<h2 class="main">How Animals Talk</h2>
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure p001width"><img src="images/p001.png" alt="Bear with cub looking at bird and text “How Animals Talk”" width="414" height="624"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb3">[<a href="#pb3">3</a>]</span></p>
+<div id="ch1" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e185">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p003.png" alt="I" width="555" height="320"></div>
+<h2 class="label">I</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>A Little Dog-Comedy</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Did you ever see two friendly dogs meet when one tried to tell the other of something
+he had discovered, when they touched noses, stood for a moment in strange, silent
+parley, then wagged their tails with mutual understanding and hurried off together
+on a canine junket?
+</p>
+<p>That was the little comedy which first drew my attention to the matter of animal communication,
+many years ago, and set my feet in the unblazed trail we are now to follow. And a
+very woodsy trail you shall find it, dim and solitary, with plenty of “blind” spots
+where one may easily go astray, and without any promise of what waits at the other
+end of it.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb4">[<a href="#pb4">4</a>]</span></p>
+<p>One summer afternoon I was reading by the open window, while my old setter, Don, lay
+at on his side in the shade of a syringa-bush. He had scooped out a hollow to suit
+him, and was enjoying the touch of the cool earth when a fat little terrier, a neighbor’s
+pet, came running with evident excitement to wake the old dog up. Don half raised
+his head, recognized his friend Nip and thumped the ground lazily with his tail.
+</p>
+<p>“It’s all right, little dog. You’re always excited over something of no consequence;
+but don’t bother me this hot day,” he said, in dog-talk, and dropped his head to sleep
+again.
+</p>
+<p>But Nip was not to be put aside, having something big on his mind. He nudged Don sharply,
+and the old dog sprang to his feet as if galvanized. For an interval of perhaps five
+seconds they stood motionless, tense, their noses almost touching; then Don’s plume
+began to wave.
+</p>
+<p>“Oh, I see!” he said; and Nip’s stubby tail whipped violently, as if to add, “Thank
+Heaven you do, at last!” The next moment they were away on the jump and disappeared
+round a corner of the house.
+</p>
+<p>Here was comedy afoot, so I slipped out through the back door to follow it. The dogs
+took no notice of me, and probably had no notion that they were observed; for I took
+pains to keep out of sight <span class="pageNum" id="pb5">[<a href="#pb5">5</a>]</span>till the play was over. Through the hay-field they led me, across the pasture lot,
+and over a wall at the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering through a chink
+of the wall, I saw Nip dancing and barking at a rock-pile, and between two of the
+rocks was a woodchuck cornered.
+</p>
+<p>For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that same woodchuck, which had a den on the
+hillside in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some garden truck. A dozen times,
+to my knowledge, the little dog had rushed the rascal; but as Nip was fat and the
+chuck cunning, the chase always ended the same way, one comedian diving into the earth
+with a defiant whistle, leaving the other to scratch or bark impotently outside.
+</p>
+<p>Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of such an uneven game; but a terrier is
+not a reasonable dog. At first Nip tried his best to drag Don into the affair; but
+the old setter had long since passed the heyday of youth, when any kind of an adventure
+could interest him. In the presence of grouse or woodcock he would still become splendidly
+animate, and then the years would slip from him as a garment; but to stupid groundhogs
+and all such “small deer” he was loftily indifferent. He was an aristocrat, of true-blue
+blood, and I had trained him to let all creatures save his proper game severely alone.
+So, after following <span class="pageNum" id="pb6">[<a href="#pb6">6</a>]</span>Nip once and finding nothing more exciting than a hole in the ground, with the familiar
+smell of woodchuck about it, he had left the terrier to his own amusement.
+</p>
+<p>When speed failed, or wind, it was vastly amusing to watch Nip try to adopt cat-strategy,
+hiding, creeping, scheming to cut off the enemy’s retreat. Almost every day he would
+have another go at the impossible; but he was too fat, too slow, too clumsy, and also
+too impatient after his doggy kind. By a great effort he could hold still when his
+game poked a cautious head out of the burrow for a look all around; but no sooner
+did the chuck begin to move away from his doorway than the little dog began to fidget
+in his hiding-place, and his tail (the one part of a dog that cannot lie) would wildly
+betray his emotions. Invariably he made his rush too soon, and the woodchuck whistled
+into his den with time to spare.
+</p>
+<p>On this summer afternoon, however, Nip had better luck or used better tactics. Whether
+he went round the hill and came over the top from an unexpected quarter, or lay in
+wait in his accustomed place with more than his accustomed patience, I have no means
+of knowing. By some new device or turn of luck he certainly came between the game
+and its stronghold; whereupon the chuck scuttled down the hill and took refuge among
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb7">[<a href="#pb7">7</a>]</span>the rocks. There Nip’s courage failed him. He was a little dog with a big bark; and
+the sight of the grizzled veteran with back against a stone and both flanks protected
+probably made him realize that it is one thing to chase a chuck which runs away, but
+quite another thing to enter his cave while he stands facing you, his beady eyes snapping
+and his big teeth bare. So after a spell of brave barking Nip had rushed off to fetch
+a larger dog.
+</p>
+<p>All that was natural enough, and very doglike; at least it so appeared to me, after
+seeing other little dogs play a similar part; but the amazing feature of this particular
+comedy was that Nip had no difficulty in getting help from a champion who had refused
+to be interested up to that critical moment. Through the wall I saw him lead Don straight
+to the rocks. The old dog thrust in his head, yelped once as he was bitten, dragged
+out the chuck, gave him a shake and a quieting crunch; then, without the slightest
+evident concern, he left Nip to worry and finish and brag over the enemy.
+</p>
+<p>It is part of the fascination of watching any animal comedy that it always leaves
+you with a question; and the unanswerable question here was, How did Nip let the other
+dog know what he wanted?
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb8">[<a href="#pb8">8</a>]</span></p>
+<p>If you are intimate enough with dogs to have discovered that they depend on their
+noses for all accurate information, that they have, as it were, a smellscape instead
+of a landscape forever before them, you will say at once, “Don must have smelled woodchuck”;
+but that is a merely convenient answer which does not explain or even consider the
+facts. Don already knew the general smell of woodchuck very well, and was, moreover,
+acquainted with the odor of the particular woodchuck to which his little dog-chum
+had been laying siege. He knew it at first hand from the creature itself, having once
+put his nose into the burrow; he got a secondary whiff of it every time Nip returned
+from his fruitless digging; and he was utterly indifferent to such foolish hunting.
+Many times before the day of reckoning arrived Nip had rushed into the yard in the
+same excitement, with the same reek of earth and woodchuck about him; and, so far
+as one may judge a dog by his action, Don took no interest in the little dog’s story.
+Yet he was off on the instant of hearing that the familiar smell of woodchuck now
+meant something more than a hole in the ground.
+</p>
+<p>That some kind of message passed between the two dogs is, I think, beyond a reasonable
+doubt; and it is precisely this silent and mysterious kind of communication (the kind
+that occurs when your <span class="pageNum" id="pb9">[<a href="#pb9">9</a>]</span>dog comes to you when you are reading, looks intently into your face, and tells you
+without words that he wants a drink or that it is time for him to be put to bed) that
+I propose now to make clear. Before we enter that trail of silence, however, there
+is a much simpler language, such as is implied in the whistle of a quail or the howl
+of a wolf, which we must try as best we can to interpret. For unless our ears are
+keen enough to distinguish between the food and hunting calls of an animal, or between
+bob-white’s love note and the yodel that brings his scattered flock together, it will
+be idle for us to ask what message or impulse a mother wolf sends after a running
+cub when she lifts her head to look at him steadily, and he checks his rush to return
+to her side as if she had made the murky woods echo to her assembly clamor.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p009width"><img src="images/p009.png" alt="Owl." width="138" height="196"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb10">[<a href="#pb10">10</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch2" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e195">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p010.png" alt="II" width="552" height="328"></div>
+<h2 class="label">II</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>Cries of the Day and Night</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">The simplest or most obvious method of animal communication is by inarticulate cries,
+expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleasure, and other primal needs or emotions.
+The wild creatures are mostly silent, and so is the bulk of their “talk,” I think;
+but they frequently raise their voice in the morning or evening twilight, and by observing
+them attentively at such a time you may measure the effect of their so-called language.
+Thus, you see plainly that to one call the animal cocks his ear and gives answer;
+at another call he becomes wildly excited; a third passes over him without visible
+result; a fourth sets his feet in motion toward the sound or else <span class="pageNum" id="pb11">[<a href="#pb11">11</a>]</span>sends him flying away from it, according to its message or import.
+</p>
+<p>That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore, beyond serious doubt; but whether
+they have, like our simplest words, any definite or unchanging value is still a question,
+the probable answer being “No,” since a word is the symbol of a thought or an idea;
+but animals live in a world of emotion, and even our human emotions are mostly dumb
+or inarticulate. I must give this negative answer, notwithstanding the fact that I
+have learned to call various birds and beasts, and that I can meet Hotspur’s challenge
+on hearing Glendower boast that he can call spirits from the vasty deep:
+</p>
+<div class="lgouter">
+<p class="line">Why, so can I, or so can any man;
+</p>
+<p class="line">But will they come when you do call for them?</p>
+</div>
+<p class="first">Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you know how to give the right call;
+but I am still doubtful whether among themselves their audible cries are ever quite
+so intelligible as is their silence.
+</p>
+<p>This question of animal speech has received a different and more positive answer,
+by the way, from a man who has spent many years in persistent observation of wild
+apes and monkeys. After watching the lively creatures from his cage in the jungle,
+attracting them by means of various fruits and recording their jabber in a phonograph,
+he <span class="pageNum" id="pb12">[<a href="#pb12">12</a>]</span>claims to have discovered the monkey words for food, water, danger and other elementary
+matters. Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these simian words the monkeys of another
+locality seem to understand them, since they run to the proper dish at the word “food”
+or show evident signs of alarm at the word “danger.”
+</p>
+<p>It is doubtless much easier to deny such a conclusion than to prove or disprove it;
+but denial is commonly the first refuge of ignorance and the last of dogmatism, and
+with these we are not concerned. I do not know whether Garner claims too much or too
+little for his monkeys; I have never had opportunity to test the matter in the jungle,
+and the caged monkeys with which I have occasionally experimented are too debased
+of habit or too imbecile in their affections to interest one who has long dealt with
+clean wild brutes. At times, however, when I have watched a monkey with an organ-grinder,
+I have noticed that the unhappy little beast displays a lively interest in the chitter
+of chimney-swifts—a lingo which to my dull ears sounds remarkably like monkey-talk.
+But that is a mere impression, momentary and of little value; while Garner speaks
+soberly after long and immensely patient observation.
+</p>
+<p>To return to first-hand evidence: among wild creatures of my acquaintance the crows
+come <span class="pageNum" id="pb13">[<a href="#pb13">13</a>]</span>nearer than any others to something remotely akin to human speech. Several times I
+have known a tame crow to learn a few of our words and, what is much more significant,
+to show his superiority over parrots and other mere mimics by using one or more of
+the words intelligently. There was one crow, for example, that would repeat the word
+“hungry” in guttural fashion whenever he thought it was time for him to dine. He used
+this word very frequently when his dinner or supper hour drew nigh, giving me the
+impression, since he did not confuse it with two other words of his vocabulary, that
+he associated the word with the notion of food or of eating; and if this impression
+be true to fact, it indicates more than appears on the surface. We shall come to the
+wild crows and their “talk” presently; the point here is, that if this bird could
+use a new human word in association with a primal need, there is nothing to prevent
+him from using a sound or symbol of his own in the same way. In other words, he must
+have some small faculty of language.
+</p>
+<p>Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy named Pharaoh Necho because of his hippety-hop
+walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games, play, social gatherings of every
+kind. To excitement from any source, whether bird or brute or human, he was as responsive
+as a weather-vane; <span class="pageNum" id="pb14">[<a href="#pb14">14</a>]</span>but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to something that looked like joking, since
+he could never see a contemplative cat or a litter of sleepy little pigs without going
+out of his way to tweak a tail and stir up trouble. At times he would watch, keeping
+out of sight in a leafy tree or on the roof of the veranda, till Tabby, the house
+cat, came out and sat looking over the yard, her tail stretched out behind her. If
+she lay down to sleep, or sat with tail curled snugly around her forepaws, she was
+never molested; but the moment her tail was out of her sight and mind Necho saw the
+chance for which he had apparently been waiting. Gliding noiselessly down behind the
+unconscious cat he would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting tail with his beak. It
+was a startling blow, and at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed he would
+fly off, “chuckling” immoderately.
+</p>
+<p>When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys assembled he would neglect even his dinner
+to join them; and presently, without ever having been taught, he announced himself
+master of a new art by yelling, “<i>Ya-hoo! Come on!</i>” which was the rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood. He said this in ludicrous
+fashion, but unmistakably to those who knew him. Sometimes he would croak the words
+softly to himself, as if memorizing them or pleased at the sound; but for the most
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb15">[<a href="#pb15">15</a>]</span>part he waited till boys were gathering for a swim or a ball game, when he would launch
+himself into flight and go skimming down the road, whooping out his new cry exultantly.
+What meaning he attached to the words, whether of boys or fun or mere excitement,
+I have no means of knowing.
+</p>
+<p>After learning this much of our speech Necho took to the wild, following a call of
+the blood, I think; for it was springtime when he disappeared, and the crows’ mating
+clamor sounded from every woodland. These birds are said to kill every member of their
+tribe who returns to them after living with men, and the saying may have some truth
+in it. I have noticed that many tame crows are like tame baboons in that they seem
+mortally afraid of their wild kinsmen; but Necho was apparently an exception. If he
+had any trouble when first he returned to his flock, the matter was settled without
+our knowledge, and during the following autumn there was evidence that he was again
+in good standing. Long afterward, as I roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty “<i>Ya-hoo! Come on!</i>” from where he led a yelling rabble of crows to chivvy a sleeping owl or jeer at
+a running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry sounded over the tree-tops when I
+could not see him or know what mischief was afoot. He never <span class="pageNum" id="pb16">[<a href="#pb16">16</a>]</span>returned to the house, and never again joined our play or allowed a boy to come near
+him.
+</p>
+<p>Not all crows have this “gift of speech”; and the fact that one tame crow learns to
+use a few English words, while five or six others hold fast to their own lingo, has
+led to the curious belief that, if you want to make a crow talk, you must split his
+tongue. How such a belief originated is a mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread
+when I was a boy that no sooner was a young crow taken from a nest than jack-knives
+were sharpened, and the leathery end of the crow’s tongue was solemnly split after
+grave debate whether a seventh or a third part was the proper medicine. If the crow
+talked after that, it was proof positive that the belief was true; and if he remained
+dumb, it was a sign that there was something wrong in the splitting; which is characteristic
+of a large part of our natural-history reasoning. The debates I have heard or read
+on the “unanswerable” question of how a chipmunk digs a hole without leaving any earth
+about the entrance (a question with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly suggestive
+of the split-tongue superstition of crow language.
+</p>
+<p>Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe, only a small proportion showed any tendency
+to repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I judge, <span class="pageNum" id="pb17">[<a href="#pb17">17</a>]</span>the same crows that in a wild state may occasionally be heard whistling like a jay,
+or “barking” or “hooting” or making some other call which ordinary crows do not or
+cannot make, and which shows an individual talent of mimicry. This last, which I have
+repeatedly observed among wild crows, is a very different matter from speech; but
+from the fact that these mimics learn to use a few English words more or less intelligently
+one might not be far wrong in concluding that every crow has in his brain a small
+undeveloped nest of cells corresponding to our “bump” of language.
+</p>
+<p>A closer observation of the wild birds may confirm this possibility. Thus, when you
+hear a solitary crow in a tree-top crying, “<i>Haw! Haw!</i>” monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail every time he repeats it, you
+may be sure that somewhere within range of his eye or voice a flock of his own kind
+are on the ground, feeding. That this particular <i>haw</i> is a communication to his fellows, telling them that the sentinel is on watch and
+all is well, seems to me very probable. There are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously
+resolve the whole phenomenon into blind chance or accident; but that does not square
+very well with the intelligence of crow nature as I have observed it; nor does it
+explain the fact that once, when I avoided the sentinel and crept near enough to <span class="pageNum" id="pb18">[<a href="#pb18">18</a>]</span>shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly guarding, the rest were no sooner
+out of danger than they whirled upon the recreant and beat him savagely to the ground.
+</p>
+<p>If you are interested enough to approach any crow-sentinel in a casual or indifferent
+kind of way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly or directly), you must note
+that his <i>haw</i> changes perceptibly while you are yet far off. It is no longer formal or monotonous;
+nor is it uttered with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly see. You would
+pronounce and spell the cry exactly as before (it should be written <i>aw</i> or <i>haw</i>, not <i>caw</i>, for there is no consonant sound in it); but if your ears are keen, they will detect
+an entirely different accent or inflection, as they detect different accents and meanings
+when a sailor’s casual or vibrant “Sail ho!” sings down from the crow-nest of a ship.
+Now run a few steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and creep, and instantly
+the <i>haw</i> changes again. This time the accent is sharper even to your dull ears; and hardly
+is the cry uttered when all the crows of the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading
+swiftly away to the woods and safety.
+</p>
+<p>Apparently, therefore, this simple <i>haw</i> of the crow is like a root word of certain ancient languages, the Chinese, for example,
+which has several <span class="pageNum" id="pb19">[<a href="#pb19">19</a>]</span>different intonations to express different ideas, but which all sound alike to foreign
+ears, and which are spelled alike when they appear in foreign print. To judge by the
+crows’ action, it is certain that their elementary <i>haw</i> has at least three distinct accents to express as many different meanings: one of
+“all’s well,” another of “watch out,” and a third of “be off!” Moreover, the birds
+seem to understand these different meanings as clearly as we understand plain English;
+they feed quietly while <i>haw</i> means one thing, or spring aloft when it means another; and though you watch them
+a lifetime you will see nothing to indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in
+their minds as to the sentinel’s message.
+</p>
+<p>Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the fox and many
+other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly, or at least a part of it
+which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the seacoast in winter you hear the crows
+<i>hawing</i> continually as they follow the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes
+on, loudly or sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though
+they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless duck and eat
+him to the bones whenever they have a chance. Because of this dangerous propensity
+you would naturally expect the water-fowl <span class="pageNum" id="pb20">[<a href="#pb20">20</a>]</span>to be suspicious of the black freebooter and to be alert when they see or hear him;
+but no sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you learn a thing to make you respect
+the crow, and perhaps to make you wonder how much or how very little you know of the
+ways of the wood folk.
+</p>
+<p>Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards especially, like to come ashore every
+day in a secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to rest or preen or take a quiet
+nap in company. It is a tempting sight to see a score or a hundred of the splendid
+birds in a close group, their heads mostly tucked under their wings; but it is practically
+impossible to stalk them, for the reason that the crows are forever ranging the shore,
+and a crow never passes a group of sleeping ducks without lifting his flight to take
+a look over the bank behind them. What his motive is no man can say; we only note
+that, in effect, he stands sentinel for the ducks against a common enemy, as he habitually
+does for his own kind. There is no escaping that keen, searching glance of his; he
+sees you creeping through the beach-grass or hiding behind a bush. He flings out a
+single <i>haw!</i> with warning, danger, derision in it; and now the same ducks that have heard him
+all day without concern spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p020width" id="p020"><img src="images/p020.jpg" alt="He flings out a single “Haw!” and the ducks spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea." width="496" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>He flings out a single “Haw!” and the ducks spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly
+out to sea.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb21">[<a href="#pb21">21</a>]</span></p>
+<p>The crows have several other variations of the same cry, expressive of other matters,
+which all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but which are meaningless to human
+ears. When I imitate the distress-call of a young crow, for example, I can bring a
+flock over my head at almost any time, the only condition being that I keep well concealed.
+At the first glimpse of a man in hiding they sheer off, and it is seldom that I can
+bring them back a second time to the same spot; yet I have a companion, one who utters
+a call very much like mine to ordinary ears, who can bring the flock back to him even
+after they have seen him and suffered at his hands. More than once I have stood beside
+him in the woods and fired a gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the flock
+pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does he begin to talk crow-talk than back they
+come again. What he says to them that I do not or cannot say is something that only
+the crows understand.
+</p>
+<p>It is commonly assumed that they come to such a call because they hear in it a cry
+for help from one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly true at times; for a help-call,
+especially from a cub or nestling, is a summons to which most animals and birds instinctively
+respond. And, strangely enough, the smaller they are the braver they seem to be. <span class="pageNum" id="pb22">[<a href="#pb22">22</a>]</span>A mother-partridge has more than once flown in my face or beaten me with her wings,
+while “fierce” hawks, owls and eagles have merely circled around me at a safe distance
+when I came near their young. In the majority of cases, however, I think that birds
+come to a distress-call simply because the excitement of an individual spreads to
+all creatures within sight or hearing, just as a crowd of men or women will become
+excited and rush to a common center before they know what the stir is all about.
+</p>
+<p>In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary to cry like a distressed young
+crow to bring a flock over your head. The imitated <i>hawing</i> of an old crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper excitement into it.
+Again, on any summer day you will hear in your own yard the <i>pip-pip</i> of arriving or departing robins. The same call is uttered by both sexes, at all times
+and in all places; yet if you listen closely you must note that there is immense variety
+in the accent or inflection of even this simple sound. The call is clear, ringing,
+joyous when the robins first arrive in the spring; it is subdued when they gather
+for the autumn flight; it is sleepy or querulous when they stand full-fed by the nest,
+and most business-like when they launch themselves into flight, which is the moment
+when you are most sure to hear it. <span class="pageNum" id="pb23">[<a href="#pb23">23</a>]</span>A robin utters this call hundreds of times every day, in one accent or another, and
+neither the other robins nor their feathered neighbors seem to pay any attention to
+it; but when a red squirrel comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin sends forth
+the same <i>pip-pip</i> with a different intonation, then the response is instantaneous. The alarm spreads
+swiftly over wood and field; clamor uprises, and birds of many species come rushing
+in from all directions; not because they have heard that Meeko is again killing young
+robins (at least, it does not seem so to me), but because excitement is afoot, and
+they are bound to join it or find out about it before they can settle down comfortably
+to their own affairs.
+</p>
+<p>There is an interesting way by which you may test this contagion of excitement for
+yourself. Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other bird neighborhood in the early
+morning, preferably at a season when every nest has eggs or fledglings in it; press
+two fingers against your lips and draw the breath sharply between them, repeating
+the squeaky cry as rapidly as possible. The sound has a peculiarly exciting quality
+even to human ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer it), and birds come
+to it as boys to a fire alarm. In a few moments you may have them streaming in from
+the four quarters of bird world, all highly <span class="pageNum" id="pb24">[<a href="#pb24">24</a>]</span>excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some innocent nest from snake or crow or
+squirrel. Because the response is most electric at the season when fledglings are
+most helpless, you are apt to think that this call of yours is mistaken by mother
+birds for a cry for help. That may be true; but be not too sure about it. The fledglings
+themselves will come almost as readily to the call when the nesting season is over
+and gone.
+</p>
+<p>I have tried that same exciting summons in many places, wild or settled, and commonly
+but not invariably with the same result, as if it were a word from the universal bird
+language. Once in a secluded valley of northern Italy I saw a hunter with his gun,
+and promptly forgot my own errand in order to chum with him and find out what he had
+learned of the wood folk. He was hunting birds to eat. “Those birds there!” he said,
+pointing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, but which seemed pitifully
+small game to me. Presently I learned that he could not shoot flying, and was having
+such bad luck that, he said, the devil surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling,
+companionable loafer, and for a time I tagged after him, watching him amusedly as
+he made careful but vain stalks of little birds that seemed to have been made wild
+by much hunting. In a spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also <span class="pageNum" id="pb25">[<a href="#pb25">25</a>]</span>to test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the hunter to hide with me in a thicket
+while I gave the call which had so often brought the feathered folk of my own New
+England woods. At my cry a wisp of birds whirled in to light at the edge of the covert;
+the Italian’s gun roared; and then I discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.
+</p>
+<p>I have since had many an uncomfortable moment at the thought of how many lovely songsters
+may have paid with their lives for that ungodly experiment; for my companion hailed
+me as a master Nimrod from the New World; and when I refused, on the plea of bad luck,
+to teach him the call, I heard him give a distressingly good imitation of it. Yet
+the experiment seemed to prove that everywhere birds quickly catch the contagion of
+excitement; that in many cases they respond to a call because it stirs their anger
+or curiosity rather than because it conveys any definite summons for help or warning
+of danger.
+</p>
+<p>When you open your ears among the beasts you hear precisely the same story; that is,
+certain cries apparently have definite meaning, like the accented <i>haw</i> of a crow, while others convey and also spread a wild emotion. Of all beasts, the
+wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most intelligent, and these seem to have definite
+calls for food or help or hunting or assembly. Such calls are <span class="pageNum" id="pb26">[<a href="#pb26">26</a>]</span>strictly tribal, I think, like the dialects of Indians, since the call of a coyote
+is quite different from the call of a timber wolf even when both intend to convey
+the same meaning. A friend of mine, an excellent mimic, who spent many years in the
+West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after drawing them within range by sending
+forth the food-call in winter; but though he knows also the food-call of the timber
+wolf, he has never once deceived these larger brutes by his imitation of it; nor has
+he ever seen a wolf of one species respond to the food or hunting call of another.
+</p>
+<p>Like most other wild animals, timid or savage, the sensitive wolves all respond, but
+much more warily than the birds, to almost any inarticulate cry expressive of emotional
+excitement; just as your dog, who is yesterday’s wolf, grows uneasy when you whine
+in your nose like a distressed puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or window,
+when a wild <i>ki-yi</i> breaks out in the distance. Indeed, it is easier to keep a boy from a fire than a
+dog from a crowd or excitement of any kind; and the same is true of their wild relatives,
+though the wariness of the latter keeps them hidden where you cannot follow their
+action. The greatest commotion I ever witnessed in a timber-wolf pack was occasioned
+by the moaning howl of a wounded wolf on a frozen lake in midwinter. <span class="pageNum" id="pb27">[<a href="#pb27">27</a>]</span>It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever recorded up to that time, and every
+time they heard it the grim beasts ran wildly here and there, howling like lunatics.
+Then, when the wounded one grew quiet, they would approach and sniff him all over;
+after which some would sit on their tails and watch him closely, while others circled
+about on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search of a lost trail.
+</p>
+<p>Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny brutes near me in the North, I have tried
+to call them or make them answer by giving what seemed to me a very good imitation
+of their cries; but seldom has a howl of mine been returned. On the contrary, the
+brutes almost always stop their howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if
+they were listening and saying, “What under the moon is that now?” Then old Tomah,
+the Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl exactly like mine, but with
+something in it which I cannot fathom or master, and instantly from the snow-filled
+woods comes back the wild wolf answer.
+</p>
+<p>Likewise, I have called moose in many different localities, and am persuaded that
+it makes very little difference what kind of whine or grunt or bellow you utter, since
+anything resembling a moose-call will do the trick if you know how to <span class="pageNum" id="pb28">[<a href="#pb28">28</a>]</span>put the proper feeling into your voice. After listening carefully to many callers,
+I note this characteristic difference: that one man invariably makes the game wary,
+suspicious, fearful, no matter how finely he calls; while another in the same place,
+with the same trumpet and apparently with the same call, manages to put something
+into his voice, something primal, emotional and essentially <i>animal</i>, which brings a bull moose hurriedly to investigate. Thus it happens that the worst
+caller I ever heard—worst in that he had no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose
+habits, and uttered a blatant, monstrous roar unlike anything a sane man ever heard
+in the heavens above or the earth beneath—was still the most successful in getting
+his game into the open. Three nights in succession I heard him call in a region where
+moose were over-shy from much hunting, and where my own imitation of the animal’s
+natural voice brought small response. In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all
+that were within hearing, I think; and every one of the great brutes threw caution
+to the dogs and came out on the jump.
+</p>
+<p>From such observations, and from others which I have not chronicled, I judge that
+the higher orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which stand for definite things,
+or mental images of <span class="pageNum" id="pb29">[<a href="#pb29">29</a>]</span>things, but that their ordinary cries merely project an emotion or excitement in such
+a way that it stirs a similar emotion in other birds or beasts of the same species;
+just as the sound of hearty laughter invariably stirs the feeling of mirth in men
+who hear it, or any inarticulate cry of fear sets human feet in motion—toward the
+cry if the hearer be brave, or away from it if he be of cowardly disposition. Yet
+even among men, who by civilization have lost some of their natural virtues, the primal
+impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the raccoon, the man’s first impulse is to rush
+to his distressed or excited fellows. If he turns and runs the other way, it means
+simply that his artificial habit or training has deadened his natural instincts.
+</p>
+<p>In speaking of “man” here I refer to the genus <i>homo</i>, not to the male specimen thereof. Among brutes most of the natural instincts are
+the same in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind, and the instincts of the
+female are commonly the stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed, or think I have noticed,
+this difference: when a cry of distress is uttered in the woods, the first bird or
+beast to appear is almost always a female; but the male is quicker on his toes at
+a battle-yell or a senseless clamor.
+</p>
+<p>This last is a personal impression, and cannot well be verified. The only record I
+have which <span class="pageNum" id="pb30">[<a href="#pb30">30</a>]</span>might pass for evidence in the matter comes from my observation of the crows. In the
+spring many of these questionable birds indulge their taste for eggs or tender flesh
+and soon become incurable nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot them, to
+save other and more useful birds. The method is very simple: one hides and calls,
+and takes the crows as they appear in swift flight, the number shot being commonly
+limited to one or two at a time. And I have observed repeatedly, at different times
+and in different localities, that when I use the distress-call of a young crow as
+a decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a female. This is the common rule,
+with occasional exceptions to point or emphasize it. But whenever I clamor like a
+crow that has discovered an owl, or send forth a senselessly excited <i>hawing</i>, almost invariably the first crow to come whooping over is a long-winged and glossy
+old male.
+</p>
+<p>Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity on my part to kill crows in this fashion?
+Perhaps it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it certainly is not thoughtless.
+One cannot blame the crows for their taste in eggs or nestlings; but one must note
+that they destroy an enormous number of insectivorous birds, and that the harm they
+do in this respect outweighs their usefulness in destroying field-mice and beetles.
+I write this <span class="pageNum" id="pb31">[<a href="#pb31">31</a>]</span>with regret; for I admire the crow, and consider him as, of all birds, the most intelligent
+and the most considerate of his own kind. I know that it is a moot question whether
+the crow does more harm or good, and that some naturalists have settled it in his
+favor; but I have too often caught him plundering nests in the springtime to be much
+impressed by his alleged usefulness at other seasons. I think that he may have been
+once useful in preserving the so-called balance of nature; but that balance is now
+dangerously unequal. The crow has flourished even in well-settled regions, thanks
+to his superior wit, while other useful birds have fearfully diminished, and this
+at a time when our orchards and gardens call more and more insistently for their help.
+Because of his disproportionate numbers the crow now appears to me, like our destructive
+and useless cats, as a positive menace in a country where he once occupied a modest
+or inconspicuous place—such a place as he still occupies in the wilderness, where
+I meet him but rarely, and where I am glad to leave him in peace, since he does not
+seriously interfere with his more beautiful or more useful neighbors. But we are wandering
+from the dim trail of animal communication, which we set out to follow.
+</p>
+<p>The inarticulate but variously accented cries of which we have spoken constitute the
+only animal <span class="pageNum" id="pb32">[<a href="#pb32">32</a>]</span>language to which our naturalists have thus far paid any attention; and doubtless
+some of them would object to the use of the word “language” in such a connection.
+In all matters of real natural history, however (real, that is, in the sense of dealing
+at first hand with individual birds or beasts), I am much more inclined to listen
+to old Tomah, who says, when I ask him whether animals can talk: “Talk? Course he
+kin talk! Eve’ting talk in hees own way. Hear me now make-um dat young owl talk.”
+And, stepping outside the circle of camp-fire light, Tomah utters a hoot, which is
+answered at a distance every time he tries it. After parleying with the stranger in
+this tentative fashion, Tomah sends forth a different call; and immediately, as if
+in ready acceptance of an invitation, a barred owl glides like a gray shadow into
+a tree over our heads. I have heard that same old Indian use horned-owl talk, wolf
+and beaver and woodpecker talk, and several other dialects of the wood folk, in the
+same fascinating and convincing way.
+</p>
+<p>One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the day or night have their meaning,
+if only one knows how to hear them; yet they constitute but a part, and probably a
+very small part, of the animal’s habitual communication with his fellows. The bulk
+of it appears to be of that silent kind which <span class="pageNum" id="pb33">[<a href="#pb33">33</a>]</span>passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have reason to believe, is the common language
+of the whole animal kingdom.
+</p>
+<p>To prove such a matter is plainly impossible. Even to investigate it frankly is to
+enter a shadowy realm between the conscious and subconscious states, where no process
+can be precisely followed, and where the liability to error is always present. Let
+us therefore begin on familiar ground by examining certain phenomena which we cannot
+explain, to be sure, but which have been observed frequently enough to give us confidence
+that we are dealing with realities. I refer especially to that curious warning or
+“feeling” of impending danger, which is supposed (erroneously, I think) to depend
+upon the so-called sixth sense of animals and men.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p033width"><img src="images/p033.png" alt="Young owl on branch." width="449" height="257"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb34">[<a href="#pb34">34</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch3" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e205">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p034.png" alt="III" width="552" height="327"></div>
+<h2 class="label">III</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>Chumfo, the Super-sense</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">For the word <i>chumfo</i> I am indebted to a tribe of savages living near Lake Mweru, in Africa, and am grateful
+to them not only for naming a thing which has no name in any civilized language, but
+also for an explanation of its function in the animal economy. We shall come to the
+definition of the word presently, after we have some clear notion of the thing for
+which the word stands. As Thomas à Kempis says, if I remember correctly, “It is better
+to feel compassion than to know how to define it.”
+</p>
+<p>By way of approach to our subject, let it be understood that <i>chumfo</i> refers in a general way to the animal’s extraordinary powers of sense perception,
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb35">[<a href="#pb35">35</a>]</span>which I would call his “sensibility” had not our novelists bedeviled that good word
+by making it the symbol of a false or artificial emotionalism. Every wild creature
+is finely “sensible” in the true meaning of the word, his sensitiveness being due
+to the fact that there is nothing dead or even asleep in nature; the natural animal
+or the natural man is from head to foot wholly alive and awake. And this because every
+atom of him, or every cell, as a biologist might insist, is of itself sentient and
+has the faculty of perception. Not till you understand that first principle of <i>chumfo</i> will your natural history be more than a dry husk, a thing of books or museums or
+stuffed skins or Latin names, from which all living interest has departed.
+</p>
+<p>I am sometimes asked, “What is the most interesting thing you find in the woods?”
+the question calling, no doubt, for the name of some bird or beast or animal habit
+that may challenge our ignorance or stir our wonder. The answer is, that whether you
+search the wood or the city or the universe, the only interesting thing you will ever
+find anywhere is the thrill and mystery of awakening life. That the animal is <i>alive</i>, and alive in a way you ought to be but are not, is the last and most fascinating
+discovery you are likely to make in nature’s kingdom. After years of intimate <span class="pageNum" id="pb36">[<a href="#pb36">36</a>]</span>observation, I can hardly meet a wild bird or beast even now without renewed wonder
+at his aliveness, his instant response to every delicate impression, as if each moment
+brought a new message from earth or heaven and he must not miss it or the consequent
+enjoyment of his own sensations. The very sleep of an animal, when he seems ever on
+the thin edge of waking, when he is still so in touch with his changing world that
+the slightest strange sound or smell or vibration brings him to his feet with every
+sense alert and every muscle ready,—all this is an occasion of marvel to dull men,
+who must be called twice to breakfast, or who meet the violent clamor of an alarm-clock
+with the drowsy refrain:
+</p>
+<div class="lgouter">
+<p class="line">Yet a little sleep, a little slumber,
+</p>
+<p class="line">A little more folding of the hands to sleep!</p>
+</div>
+<p class="first">You will better understand what I mean by the animal’s aliveness, his uncloying pleasure
+in the sensation of living, if you can forget any tragical theories or prejudices
+of animal life which you have chanced to read, and then frankly observe the first
+untrammeled creature you meet in the outdoor world. Here at your back door, for example,
+is a flock of birds that come trooping from the snowy woods to your winter feast of
+crumbs. See how they dart hither and yon between mouthfuls, <span class="pageNum" id="pb37">[<a href="#pb37">37</a>]</span>as if living creatures could not be still or content with any one thing, even a good
+thing, in a world of endless variety. Look again, more closely, and see how they merely
+taste of the abundance on your table, and straightway leave it for a morsel that the
+wind blows from under their beaks, and that they are bound to have if it takes all
+winter. Every other minute they flit to a branch above the table, look about alertly,
+measure the world once more, make sure of the dog that he is asleep, and of the sky
+that it holds no hawk; then they wipe their bills carefully, using a twig for a napkin,
+and down to the table they go to begin all over again. So every bite is for them a
+feast renewed, a feast with all the spices of the new, the fresh, the unexpected and
+the adventurous in it.
+</p>
+<p>Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote from men, here is a deer slipping shadow-like
+through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting twenty varieties of food in as many
+minutes, and keeping tabs on every living or moving or growing thing while she eats;
+or a fox, which seems to float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, listening,
+testing the air-smells as one would appreciate a varied landscape, playing Columbus
+to every nook or brush-pile and finding in it something that no explorer ever found
+before. Such is <span class="pageNum" id="pb38">[<a href="#pb38">38</a>]</span>the natural way of a fox, which makes a devious trail because so many different odors
+attract him here or there.
+</p>
+<p>In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to understand the singing lines from “Saul”:
+</p>
+<div class="lgouter">
+<p class="line">How good is man’s life, the mere living, how fit to employ
+</p>
+<p class="line">All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!</p>
+</div>
+<p class="first">It is to understand also the spirit of Browning, who is hardly a world poet, to be
+sure, but who has the distinction of being the only famous poet who is always alive
+and awake. Homer nods; Dante despairs and mourns; Shakespeare has a long period of
+gloom when he can write only terrible tragedies of human failure; other great poets
+have their weary days or melancholy hours, but Browning sings ever a song of abounding
+life. Even his last, the Epilogue to “Asolando,” is not a swan-song, like Tennyson’s;
+it is rather a bugle-call, and it sounds not the “taps” of earth, but the “reveille”
+of immortality. But we are wandering from our woodsy trail.
+</p>
+<p>Those who make an ornithology of mere feathers, or who imagine they know an animal
+because they know what the scientists have said about him, see in this instant responsiveness
+of the wild creature only a manifestation of fear, and almost every book of birds
+or beasts repeats the story <span class="pageNum" id="pb39">[<a href="#pb39">39</a>]</span>of terror and tragedy. Yet every writer of such books probably owns a dog that displays
+in less degree (because he is less alive) every single symptom of the wild creature,
+including his alleged fears; and the dog, far from leading a tragic or terror-governed
+life, is hilariously disposed to make an adventure or a picnic of every new excursion
+afield. Moreover, if one of these portrayers of animal fears or tragedies has ever
+had an adventure of his own; if he has penetrated a wild region on tiptoe, or run
+the white rapids in a canoe, or heard the wind sing in his ears on a breakneck gallop
+across country, or trailed a bear to his covert, or hunted bandits in the open, or
+followed the bugles when they blew for war,—then he must know well that these unforgetable
+moments, when a man’s senses all awaken and his nerves tingle and he treads the earth
+like a buck in spring, are the only times in a man’s dull life when he feels himself
+wholly alive and a man. That a naturalist should forget this when he sees an alert
+wild animal, and deny his dog and his own experience of life by confounding alertness
+with fear, is probably due not so much to his own blindness as to his borrowed notions,
+such as the “struggle for existence,” the “reign of terror,” and other hallucinations
+which have been packed into his head in the name of science or natural history.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb40">[<a href="#pb40">40</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Just to take a walk with your dog may be a revelation to you, as most simple matters
+are when you dare to view them for yourself without prejudice. In fact, what is any
+revelation or discovery but seeing things as they are? This daily walk over familiar
+ground, which bores you because you must take it for exercise, leaving out of it the
+fun which is the essential element of any exercise, is to your dog another joyous
+and expectant exploration of the Indes. He explored the same ground yesterday, to
+be sure, but all sorts of revolutions and migrations take place overnight; and if
+he be a real dog, not a spoiled pet, he will uncover more surprises on the familiar
+road than you uncover in the morning newspaper. Follow him sympathetically as he finds
+endlessly interesting things where you find little but boredom, and you may learn
+that there are three marked differences between you and a normal animal: first, that
+he keeps the spirit of play, which you have well-nigh lost; second, that he lives
+in his sensations and is happy, while you dwell mostly in your thoughts and postpone
+happiness for the future; and third, that he is alive now, every moment, and you used
+to be alive the day before yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>In all this you are simply typical of our unnatural civilization, which begins to
+enumerate or <span class="pageNum" id="pb41">[<a href="#pb41">41</a>]</span>describe us as so many thousand “souls,” doubtless because every single body of us
+is moribund or asleep. Consider our noses, for example. They are the seat of a wonderful
+faculty, more dependable than sight or hearing; they are capable of giving us sensations
+more varied than those of color, and almost as enjoyable as those of harmony; they
+can be easily trained so as to recognize every tree and plant and growing thing by
+its delicate fragrance; they would add greatly to our safety and convenience, as well
+as to our enjoyment, did we use them as nature intended; yet so thoroughly neglected
+are they, as a rule, that it takes a burning rag or a jet of escaping coal-gas to
+rouse them to the immense and varied world of odors in which an animal lives continually.
+</p>
+<p>At present I am the alleged owner of a young setter, Rab, who has reached the stage
+of development when he thinks he owns me. For after you have properly trained a dog,
+there comes a brief time when he discovers with joy that he can make you do things
+for him; and then he is like a child who discovers that he can make you talk (that
+is, show some sign of life) by asking you questions. And this young setter has, I
+am convinced, a very low opinion of human aliveness, since there is never a day when
+he does not give me a hint that he considers me a poor cripple—<span class="pageNum" id="pb42">[<a href="#pb42">42</a>]</span>excepting, perhaps, the rare days when I take him woodcock-hunting, when he mildly
+approves of me.
+</p>
+<p>One night, after waiting a long time at my feet till I should become animate, Rab
+followed me hopefully into the dark kitchen, where he had never before been allowed
+to go. I heard his steps behind me only as far as the door, and thought he was afraid
+to enter; but when I turned on the light, there he stood in the doorway, “frozen”
+into a beautiful point, his head upturned to a bell and battery on the wall. Presently
+a mouse hopped from the battery into a waste-basket on the floor, and Rab pointed
+the thing stanchly, his whole body quivering with delight when a faint odor stole
+to his nostrils or a rustle of paper to his ears. From the basket the mouse streaked
+to the coal-hod, and Rab pointed that, too, and then a crack under a door, and a yawning
+closet drawer. “My bones!” he said, trying to claw the drawer open. “This is a good
+place; something is alive here!” Then he came over and sat in front of me, looking
+up in my face, his head twisted sideways, to demand why I had so long kept him out
+of the only part of the house that was not wholly dormant.
+</p>
+<p>Though the adventure was twelve months ago, “age cannot wither it, nor custom stale
+its infinite variety,” for every night Rab comes to me <span class="pageNum" id="pb43">[<a href="#pb43">43</a>]</span>where I am reading, nudges my elbow, paws my book, sits in front of me to yawn hugely,
+gives me no peace, in short, till I follow him to the kitchen for another go at the
+waste-basket, the coal-hod and all the closet drawers. It is of no avail to leave
+the doors open; he will not go unless I join him in the enjoyment of something that
+lives. A short time since we flushed another mouse in the cellar, whither he followed
+me to look after the furnace; and now he pesters me by day as well as by night whenever
+he finds me, as he thinks, wrapped in unmanly lethargy.
+</p>
+<p>With all his vivacity this young setter, who seems so alert among mere men, becomes
+a dull creature the moment you compare him with his wild kindred. He cannot begin
+to interpret the world through his senses as they instantly interpret it, and he would
+starve to death where they live on the fat of the land. Once on a forest trail I came
+upon him pointing stanchly at the edge of a little opening that lumbermen had made
+for yarding logs. Just across the opening, where a jumper road joined the yard, stood
+a noble buck, and he was “pointing,” too, for he was face to face with such a creature
+as he had never before seen. Both animals were like statues, so motionless did they
+stand; but there was this difference, that the dog rested solidly on earth and might
+have been <span class="pageNum" id="pb44">[<a href="#pb44">44</a>]</span>carved from marble, while the buck seemed to rest on air and to be compounded of some
+ethereal essence. His eyes fairly radiated light and color. The velvet on his antlers
+seemed to grow as I looked upon it, like the velvet moss in which the fairies are
+said to rest. Every hair of him from nose to tail tip was gloriously alive. A moment
+only he stood, but long enough for me to carry a picture of him forever afterward;
+then he bounded up the old road, and Rab came running over to ask me what new thing
+he had discovered.
+</p>
+<p>This marvelous alertness of the natural animal is commonly attributed to the fact
+that his physical senses are more acute than ours; but that is true only of some particular
+sense of a certain creature. The wolf’s nose, the deer’s ear, the vulture’s eye,—these
+are probably keener than any similar human organ; but, on the other hand, a man’s
+eye is very much keener for details than the eye of wolf or deer; his senses of touch
+and taste are finer than anything to be found among the lower orders, and the average
+of his five senses is probably the highest upon earth. Yet the animal is more responsive
+to impressions of the external world, and this is due, I think, to the fact that he
+lives more in his sensations; that he is not cumbered, as we are, by inner phenomena;
+that he is free from pain, care, fear, regret, anxiety and <span class="pageNum" id="pb45">[<a href="#pb45">45</a>]</span>other mental complexities; that he is accustomed to hear (that is, to receive vibrations)
+through his feet or his skin quite as much as through his ears; and that his whole
+body, relaxed and at ease, often becomes a first-class receiving instrument for what
+we call sense impressions.
+</p>
+<p>As an example of this last, note the wild creature’s response to every change of air
+pressure, a response so immediate and certain that one might accurately forestall
+the barometer by observing the action of birds, or even of chickens, which anticipate
+a storm long before your face has noted the moist wind or your eye the rain-cloud.
+In the winter woods I have often seen a deer feeding greedily (quite at variance with
+his usual dainty tasting) at an hour long before or long after his accustomed time,
+and as I traveled wider I would find other deer doing the same thing. I used to wonder
+at this, till I noticed that such unusual action was always followed by a storm—not
+an ordinary brief snowfall, to which deer pay little attention beyond seeking shelter
+while it lasts, but a severe storm or blizzard, during which most animals lie quiet
+for a whole day, or even two or three days, without stirring abroad for food.
+</p>
+<p>Whether an element of forethought enters into this act of “stuffing” themselves before
+a storm, or whether it is wholly instinctive, like the bear’s <span class="pageNum" id="pb46">[<a href="#pb46">46</a>]</span>change of diet before he dens for his winter sleep, is a question which does not concern
+us, since nobody can answer it. In either case the deer have felt, as surely as our
+most sensitive instruments, not only the decreasing pressure of the air but also its
+increasing moisture.
+</p>
+<p>That such sensitiveness is not of any one organ, but rather of the whole body, becomes
+more evident when we study the lower orders—fishes, for example, which may winter
+under a dozen fathoms of water and a two-foot blanket of ice, but which nevertheless
+respond to the changing air currents far above their heads. Once on a northern lake,
+in March, I kept tabs on some trout for fourteen consecutive days, and it seemed that
+they moved from deep to shallow water or back again whenever the wind veered to the
+proper quarter. I had a water-hole cut in the thick ice, and, finding a trout under
+it one day, I kept a couple of lines with minnows there constantly. The hole was in
+a shallow place, over a sandy bottom, and by putting my face to the opening, with
+a blanket over my head to exclude the upper light, I could dimly see the shadows move
+in from deep water. On six scattering days, when the wind came light or strong from
+the south, two of the days bringing snow, the trout evidently moved shoreward, since
+I caught them abundantly, as many as I needed <span class="pageNum" id="pb47">[<a href="#pb47">47</a>]</span>and some to spare; but on the other eight days, some clear and some stormy, when the
+wind was north of east or west, not a trout was seen or caught, and only once was
+a minnow of mine missing.
+</p>
+<p>It may be said that the trout simply followed their food-supply; but I doubt this,
+since trout apparently feed very little in winter; and in formulating any theory of
+the matter one must account for the fact that big fish or little fish moved shoreward
+whenever the wind blew south. The phenomenon may appear less foreign to our experience,
+though not less mysterious to our reason, if we remember that an old wound or a corn
+may by its aching foretell a storm, or that a person suffering from nervous prostration
+may by his sudden depression know that the barometer will soon be falling.
+</p>
+<p>The same bodily sensitiveness appears unchanged in our domestic animals. I once saw
+a deer and her two fawns kneel down in the woods, and watched them in astonishment
+as they rested for some time on their knees, as if in supplication; then the ground
+rocked under me, and I knew that their feet had felt the tremor of an earthquake long
+before I was sensible of it. Such an observation seemed wonderful to me till I learned
+that our sheep are equally sensitive in their <span class="pageNum" id="pb48">[<a href="#pb48">48</a>]</span>elastic hoofs, and that our pigs respond not only to vibration of earth or air, but
+also to some finer vibration set in motion, apparently, by human excitement.
+</p>
+<p>Moreover, I have known one dog, old and half deaf, that, whether asleep or awake,
+would respond to the faint tremor of his master’s automobile before it came into sight
+or hearing. And what there is in the tremor of one machine to distinguish it from
+another of the same make and power is something that the unaided ear can hardly measure.
+The dog lived under a hilltop, on a highway over which scores of automobiles passed
+daily; and on holidays, when his master was at home, the scores would increase to
+hundreds. He would sleep for hours on the veranda, paying no heed to the noise or
+smell or dust of the outrageous things, till suddenly he would jump up, bark, and
+start for the gate; and in a moment or two we would see the master’s auto rise into
+sight over the brow of the hill.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>The instant response of deer or dog to minute external impressions, though startling
+enough, is probably wholly physical, a matter of vibrations on one side and of nerves
+on the other; but there are other phenomena of sensitiveness (and these bring us nearer
+to our trail of animal communication) <span class="pageNum" id="pb49">[<a href="#pb49">49</a>]</span>for which it is much harder to find a satisfactory physical explanation. Such is the
+feeling or warning of unsensed danger, or the premonition that some one unseen and
+unheard is approaching—a phenomenon which seems to be common among animals, to judge
+from repeated observation, and which appears often enough in human beings to make
+not only the inquisitive Society for Psychical Research but almost every thoughtful
+man or woman take some note of it.
+</p>
+<p>For example, a man awake in his bed sees his son, whom he thinks safely ashore in
+a foreign country, fall overboard from a steamer to his death, at the very hour when
+the son did fall overboard, as was afterward learned. Or a woman, the wife of a sea-captain,
+sitting on the veranda at home in the bright moonlight, sees the familiar earth vanish
+in a world of water, and looks suddenly upon her husband’s ship as it reels to the
+gale, turns over to the very edge of destruction, and then rights itself with half
+its crew swept overboard—and all this while the precise event befell a thousand miles
+away. Such things, which spell a different kind of sensitiveness from that with which
+we are familiar, have happened to people well known to me; but as they have happened
+to others also, and as almost every town or village has a convincing example of its
+own, I <span class="pageNum" id="pb50">[<a href="#pb50">50</a>]</span>forbear details and accept the fact, and try here to view or understand it as a <i>natural</i> phenomenon.
+</p>
+<p>At first you may strongly object even to my premise, calling it incredible that sense-bound
+mortals should feel a danger that their eyes cannot see or their ears hear; but there
+are at least two reasonable answers to your objection. In the first place, we are
+sense-bound only in the sense of limiting ourselves unnecessarily, confining our perception
+to five habitual modes, shamefully neglecting to cultivate even these, and ignoring
+the use or the existence of other and perhaps finer means of contact with the external
+world. Again, it is not a whit more incredible that sensitive creatures, whether brute
+or human, should feel the coming or going of a person than that they should feel his
+look or glance, as they certainly do.
+</p>
+<p>This last is no cloudy theory; it is a plain fact which endures the test of observation.
+Almost any man of strong personality can disturb or awaken a sleeping wild animal
+simply by looking at him intently; and the nearer the man is the more certain the
+effect of his gaze on the sleeping brute. The same is true in less degree of most
+Indians and woodsmen, and of many sensitive women and children, as you may prove for
+yourself. Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person is taking a nap—not
+sleeping <span class="pageNum" id="pb51">[<a href="#pb51">51</a>]</span>heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly, naturally, as all wild animals take their
+rest. Make no noise, but stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the
+sleeper’s face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the head
+or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he feels your look and
+is trying subconsciously to avoid it. The awakening, whether of animals or of men,
+does not always follow our look, most fortunately, but it happens frequently enough
+under varying conditions to put the explanation of chance entirely out of the question.
+</p>
+<p>When I was a child I used to sit long hours in the woods alone, partly for love of
+the breathing solitude, and partly for getting acquainted with wild birds or beasts,
+which showed no fear of me when they found me quiet. At such times I often found within
+myself an impression which I expressed in the words, “Something is watching you.”
+Again and again, when nothing stirred in my sight, that curious warning would come;
+and almost invariably, on looking around, I would find some bird or fox or squirrel
+which had probably caught a slight motion of my head and had halted his roaming to
+creep near and watch me inquisitively. As I grew older the “feel” of living things
+grew dimmer; yet many times in later years, when <span class="pageNum" id="pb52">[<a href="#pb52">52</a>]</span>I have been in the wilderness alone, I have experienced the same impression of being
+watched or followed, and so often has it proved a true warning that I still trust
+it and act upon it, even when my eyes see nothing unusual and my ears hear nothing
+but their own ringing in the silence.
+</p>
+<p>I remember once, when I was sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, that I began
+to have an increasing impression that some living thing unseen was near me. At first
+I neglected it, for I had my eyes on a deer that interested me greatly; but the feeling
+grew stronger till I obeyed it and rose to my feet. At the first motion came a startling
+<i>woof!</i> and from some bushes close behind me a bear jumped away for the woods. No doubt he
+had been there some time, watching me or creeping nearer, knowing that I was alive,
+but completely puzzled by my shapelessness and lack of action. A similar thing has
+happened several times, in other places and with other animals, and always at a moment
+when I was most in harmony with the environment and a sharer of its deep tranquillity.<a class="noteRef" id="xd32e723src" href="#xd32e723">1</a>
+</p>
+<p>As a child this faculty (if such it be) was as natural as anything else in life; for
+in childhood we take the world as we find it in personal experience, and nothing is
+especially wonderful <span class="pageNum" id="pb53">[<a href="#pb53">53</a>]</span>where all is wonder. I then thought no more of feeling the presence of an animal than
+of hearing him walk when I could not see him; but as I grew older the experience seemed
+a little odd or “queer,” and I never spoke of it to any one till I discovered, first,
+that the faculty seems to be common among animals, and second, that some Indians (not
+all) have it and regard it as the most natural thing in the world. Here is how the
+latter discovery came about:
+</p>
+<p>Simmo and I were calling moose from a lake one moonlit night, with a silent canoe
+under us, dark evergreen woods at our back, and a little ghost of a beaver-meadow,
+vague, misty, shadow-filled, immediately before our eyes yet seeming as remote as
+any drifting cloud. To our repeated call no answer was returned; then we allowed the
+canoe to drift ashore where it would, and sat listening to the vast silence. I was
+brought back from my absorption in the fragrance, the harmony, the infinite stillness
+of the night by feeling the canoe shake and hearing Simmo whisper, “Somet’ing near.
+Look out!”
+</p>
+<p>Now in a silence like that, the tense, living silence of the wilderness at night,
+one’s ears are as full of tricks as a <i>puckwudgie</i>, who is one of the mischievous fairy-folk of the Indians. The whine of a mosquito
+sounds across the whole lake; or <span class="pageNum" id="pb54">[<a href="#pb54">54</a>]</span>the mutter of a frog becomes like the roar of a bull of Bashan; or suddenly you begin
+to hear music as the faint vibration of some dry stub, purring in the unfelt air currents,
+turns to the booming of a mighty church organ. At such a time, unless one has trained
+his senses to ignore the obvious (the Indian secret of seeing and hearing things),
+one soon becomes confused, uncertain of the borderland between the real and the imaginary;
+so presently I turned to Simmo and whispered, “You hear him?”
+</p>
+<p>The Indian shook his head. “No hear-um; just feel-um,” he said; and again we settled
+down to watch. For several minutes we questioned the woods, the lake, the meadow;
+but nothing stirred, not a sound broke the painful quiet, the while we both felt strongly
+that some living thing was near us. Then a shadow moved from the darker shadow of
+an upturned root, only a few yards away, and a great bull stood alert on the open
+shore.
+</p>
+<p>I thought then, and I still think, that besides our ordinary five senses we have a
+finer faculty which I must call, for lack of a better term, the sense of presence;
+and I explain it on the assumption that every life recognizes and attracts every other
+life by some occult force, as dead matter (if there be such a thing) attracts all
+other matter by the mysterious force of gravitation.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p054width" id="p054"><img src="images/p054.jpg" alt="A shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned root—and a great buck stood alert on the open shore." width="493" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>A shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned root—and a great buck stood alert
+on the open shore.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb55">[<a href="#pb55">55</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Doubtless I have been many times watched in the woods when I did <i>not</i> know or feel it; and certainly I have often had my eyes upon an unconscious bird
+or beast when, though I fancied he grew uneasy under my scrutiny, he did not have
+enough sense of danger to run away—possibly because no real danger threatened him,
+the eyes that looked upon him being friendly or merely curious.
+</p>
+<p>Once on a hardwood ridge I came upon a buck lying asleep in open timber, and stood
+with my back against a great sugar-maple, observing him for five or six minutes before
+he stirred. No, I was not trying to awaken him by a look, or to stage any other experiment.
+I was simply enjoying a rare sight, noting with immense interest that this wild creature,
+whom I had always seen so splendidly alert, could nod and blink like any ordinary
+mortal. So near was he that I could mark the drowsiness of his eyes, the position
+of his feet, the swelling of his sides as he breathed. I happened to be counting his
+respirations in friendly fashion, comparing them with my own, when suddenly his head
+turned to me; his eyes snapped wide open, and they were looking straight into mine.
+Apparently his feeling or subconscious perception had warned him where danger was;
+but still his eyes could not recognize it, standing there <span class="pageNum" id="pb56">[<a href="#pb56">56</a>]</span>in plain sight. For to stand motionless without concealment is often the best way
+to deceive a wild animal, which habitually associates life with motion.
+</p>
+<p>No more drowsiness for that buck! He was startled, plainly enough; but he rose to
+his feet very stealthily, not stirring a leaf, and stood at tense attention. When
+he turned his head to look over his shoulder behind him I raised my field-glass, for
+I wanted to read his thought, if possible, in his eyes. As he turned his gaze my way
+again his nose seemed to sweep my face. It rested there a moment full on the lens
+of my glass, moved on, and returned for a longer inspection. Then he glided past,
+still without recognizing me, testing the air at every springy step, harking this
+way, looking that way, and disappearing at last as if he trod on eggs.
+</p>
+<p>From such experiences I judge that the feeling of unsensed danger, or the more subtle
+feel of a living thing, is as variable in the animals as are their instincts or their
+social habits. It may be dull in one creature and keen in another of the same species,
+or alternately awake and asleep in the same creature; but there is no longer any doubt
+in my mind that it is a widespread gift among birds and beasts. When it appears occasionally
+among men, therefore, it is to be regarded <span class="pageNum" id="pb57">[<a href="#pb57">57</a>]</span>not as uncanny or queer, but, like the sure sense of direction which a few men possess,
+as a precious and perfectly natural inheritance from our primitive ancestors. That
+it skips a dozen generations to alight on an odd man here or there, like a storm-driven
+bird on a ship at sea, is precisely what we might expect of heredity, which follows
+a course that seems to us erratic or at times marvelous, as geometry appears to an
+Eskimo, because we do not yet understand its law or working principle.
+</p>
+<p>Among savage tribes, who live a natural outdoor life in close contact with nature,
+the perception of danger or of persons beyond the ordinary sense range is much more
+common than among civilized folk. Almost every explorer and missionary who has spent
+much time with African natives, for example, has noticed that the Blacks have some
+mysterious means of knowing when a stranger is approaching one of their villages—mysterious,
+that is, because it does not depend on runners or messengers or any other of our habitual
+means of communication. A recent observer of these people has at last offered an explanation
+of the matter, with many other impressions of native philosophy, in a work to which
+he gives the suggestive title of <i>Thinking Black</i>. Of the scores of books on Africa which I have read, <span class="pageNum" id="pb58">[<a href="#pb58">58</a>]</span>this is the only one to show more than a very superficial knowledge of the natives,
+and the reason is apparent. The author thinks, most reasonably, that you cannot possibly
+know the native or understand his customs until you know his thought, and that the
+only trail to his thought is through the language in which the thought is expressed.
+Therefore did he study the speech as a means of knowing the man; and herein he is
+in refreshing contrast to other African travelers and hunters I have read, who spend
+a few months or weeks in a white man’s camp, knowing the natives about as intimately
+as lovers know the moon, and then babble of native customs or beliefs or “superstitions,”—as
+if any rite or habit could be understood without first understanding the philosophy
+of life from which it sprang, as a flower from a hidden seed.
+</p>
+<p>This rare observer, who knows how the native thinks because he perfectly understands
+the native language, tells us<a class="noteRef" id="xd32e769src" href="#xd32e769">2</a> that the Blacks clearly recognize the power of animals and of normal men to know
+many things beyond their sense range; that they give it a definite name, and explain
+it in a way which indicates an astonishing degree of abstract thought on the part
+of those whom we ignorantly call unthinking savages. <span class="pageNum" id="pb59">[<a href="#pb59">59</a>]</span>According to these natives, every natural animal, man included, has the physical gifts
+of touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and <i>chumfo</i>. I must still use the native term because it cannot be translated, because it implies
+all that we mean by instinct, intuitive or absolute knowledge and (a thing which no
+other psychology has even hinted at) the process by which such knowledge is acquired.
+</p>
+<p>This <i>chumfo</i> is not a sixth or extra sense, as we assume, but rather the unity or perfect co-ordination
+of the five senses at their highest point. I may illustrate the matter this way, still
+following Crawford, whose record contains many curious bits of observation, savage
+philosophy, woods lore and animal lore, many of them written by the camp-fire and
+all jumbled together pell-mell:
+</p>
+<p>For ordinary perception at near distances the eye or the ear is sufficient, and while
+engaged in any near or obvious matter the five senses work independently, each busy
+with its own function. But when such observation is ended or at fault, and the man
+retreats, as it were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge
+and harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. (Here, in native dress,
+is nothing more or less than the psychologist’s subconscious self, with its mysterious
+working.) At such moments the whole <span class="pageNum" id="pb60">[<a href="#pb60">60</a>]</span>animal or the whole man, not his brain and senses alone, becomes sensitive to the
+most delicate impressions, to inaudible sounds or vibrations, to unseen colors, to
+unsmelled odors or intangible qualities,—to a multitude of subtle messages from the
+external world, which are ordinarily unnoticed because the senses are ordinarily separate,
+each occupied with its particular message. So when a sleeping animal is suddenly aware
+that he must be alert, he does not learn of approaching danger through his ears or
+nose, but through <i>chumfo</i>, through the perfect co-ordination of all his senses working together as one. In
+the same way a wandering black man always knows where his hut or camp is; he holds
+his course on the darkest night, finds his way through a vast jungle, goes back to
+any spot in it where he left something, and often astonishes African travelers by
+getting wind of their doings while they are yet far distant.
+</p>
+<p>Such is the native philosophy; and the striking feature of it is, that it is not superstitious
+but keenly observant, not ignorant but rational and scientific, since it seems to
+anticipate our latest biological discoveries, or rather, as we shall see, a philosophy
+which rests upon biological science as a foundation.
+</p>
+<p>Perhaps the first suggestion that the native may have reason in his theory comes from
+the extraordinary <span class="pageNum" id="pb61">[<a href="#pb61">61</a>]</span>sensitiveness of certain blind people, who walk confidently about a cluttered room,
+or who sort the family linen after it returns from the laundry. These blind people
+say, and think, that they avoid objects by feeling the increasing air pressure as
+they approach, or that they sort the family linen by smell; but it appears more likely
+that a greater unity and refinement of all their senses results from their living
+in darkness.
+</p>
+<p>That our human senses have unused possibilities, or that we may possibly possess extra
+senses of which we are not conscious, may appear if you study the phenomenon of hearing,
+especially if you study it when you hear a strange sound in the woods or in the house
+at night. It is assumed that we always locate a sound by the ear, and that we determine
+its volume or distance by our judgment from previous experiences; but that, I think,
+is a secondary and not a primary process. When we act most naturally we seem to locate
+a sound not by search or experiment, but instantly, instinctively, absolutely; and
+then by our ear or our judgment we strive to verify our first <i>chumfo</i> impression.
+</p>
+<p>As a specific instance, you are lying half asleep at night when a faint, strange sound
+breaks in upon your consciousness. If you act naturally now, you will nine times out
+of ten locate the sound <span class="pageNum" id="pb62">[<a href="#pb62">62</a>]</span>on the instant, without bringing your “good ear” to bear upon it; but if you neglect
+or lose your first impression, you may hunt for an hour and go back to bed without
+finding the source of the disturbance. Or you are traveling along a lonely lane at
+night, more alive than you commonly are, when a sudden cry breaks out of the darkness.
+It lasts but a fraction of a second and is gone; yet in that fleeting instant you
+have learned three things: you know the direction of the cry; you know, though you
+never heard it before, whether it is a loud cry from a distance or a faint cry from
+near at hand; and you are so sure of its exact location that you go to a certain spot,
+whether near or far, and say, “That cry sounded here.”
+</p>
+<p>So much if you act naturally; but if you depend on your ears or judgment, as men are
+apt to do, then you are in for a long chase before you locate the cry of a bird or
+a beast or a lost child in the night.
+</p>
+<p>It is easy to make mistakes here, for we are so cumbered by artificial habits that
+it is difficult to follow any purely natural process; but our trail becomes clearer
+when we study the matter of hearing among the brutes. Thus, your dog is lying asleep
+by the fire when a faint noise or footstep sounds outside. Sometimes, indeed, there
+is no audible sound at all when he springs to his feet; <span class="pageNum" id="pb63">[<a href="#pb63">63</a>]</span>but no sooner is the door opened for him than he is around the house and away, heading
+as straight for the disturbance as if he knew, as he probably does, exactly where
+to find it. Yet your dog is, I repeat, a very dull creature in comparison with his
+wild kindred. Their ability to locate a sound is almost unbelievable, not because
+they have more delicate ears (for the human ear is much finer, being sensitive to
+a thousand inflections, tones, harmonies, which are meaningless to the brute), but
+because of what the Blacks call their better <i>chumfo</i> or what we thoughtlessly call their stronger instincts.
+</p>
+<p>This has been strongly impressed upon me at times when I have tried to call a moose
+in the wilderness. If you seek these animals far back where they are never hunted—a
+difficult matter nowadays—the bulls answer readily enough, or sometimes too readily,
+as when one big brute chased me to my canoe and gave me a hatless run for it; but
+in a much-hunted region they are very shy and come warily to a call. The best way
+to see them in such a place is to call a few times at night, or until you get an answer,
+and then go quickly away before the bull comes near enough to begin circling suspiciously.
+At daybreak you are very apt to find him waiting; and the astonishing thing is that
+he is waiting at the very spot where you used your trumpet.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb64">[<a href="#pb64">64</a>]</span></p>
+<p>The place you select for calling may be a tiny bog in a vast forest, or a little,
+nameless beaver-meadow by a lake or river. It is like many other such places, near
+or far, and the bull may come from a distance, crossing lakes, rivers, bogs and dense
+forest on his way; but he never seems to make a mistake or to be at a loss in locating
+the call. On a still night I have heard a bull answer me from a mountain five or six
+miles away; yet in the morning there he was, waiting expectantly for his mate near
+the bit of open shore where I had called him; and to reach that spot he must either
+have crossed the lake by swimming, a distance of two miles, or else have circled it
+on a wide détour. That he should come such a distance through woods and waters, and
+pick the right spot from a hundred others on either side, seems to me not a matter
+of ears or experience but of <i>chumfo</i>, or absolute knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>Another and more interesting verification of the <i>chumfo</i> philosophy is open to any man who will go quietly through the big woods by moonlight,
+putting himself back amid primal or animal conditions, and observing himself closely
+as he does so. The man who has not traveled the wilderness alone at night has a vivid
+and illuminating experience awaiting him. He is amazed, so soon as he overcomes the
+first unnatural feeling of fear, to find <span class="pageNum" id="pb65">[<a href="#pb65">65</a>]</span>how alive he is, and how much better he can hear and smell than ever he dreamed. At
+such a time one’s whole body seems to become a delicately poised instrument for receiving
+sense impressions, and one’s skin especially begins to tingle and creep as it wakes
+from its long sleep. Nor is this “creeping” of the skin strange or queer, as we assume,
+but perfectly natural. The sensations which we now ignorantly associate with fear
+of the dark (a late and purely human development; the animal knows it not) are in
+reality the sensations of awakening life.
+</p>
+<p>Possibly we may explain this supersensitiveness of the skin, when life awakens in
+it once more and it becomes for us another and finer instrument of perception, by
+the simple biological fact that every cell of the multitudes which make up the human
+body has a more or less complete organization within itself. Moreover, as late experiments
+have shown, a cell or a tissue of cells will live and prosper in a suitable environment
+when completely separated from the body of which it was once a part. These human cells
+inherit certain characteristics common to all animal cells since life began; and it
+is not improbable that they inherit also something of the primal cell’s sensibility,
+or capacity to receive impressions from the external world. This universal cell-function
+was largely <span class="pageNum" id="pb66">[<a href="#pb66">66</a>]</span>given over when the animal (a collection of cells) began to develop special organs
+of touch, sight, and hearing; but there is no indication that the original power of
+sensibility has ever been wholly destroyed in any cell. It is, therefore, still within
+the range of biological possibility that a man should hear with his fingers or smell
+with his toes, since every cell of both finger and toe once did a work corresponding
+to the present functions of the five animal senses.
+</p>
+<p>Before you dismiss this as an idle or impossible theory, try a simple experiment,
+which may open your eyes to the reality of living things. Go to a greenhouse and select
+a spot of bare earth under a growing rose-bush. Examine the surface carefully, then
+brush and examine it again, to be sure that not a root of any kind is present. Now
+place a handful of good plant-food on the selected spot, and go away to your own affairs.
+Return in a week or so, brush aside your “bait,” and there before your eyes is a mass
+of white feeding-roots where no root was before. In some way, deep under the soil,
+the hungry cells have heard or smelled or felt a rumor of food, and have headed for
+it as surely as a dog follows his nose to his dinner.
+</p>
+<p>Do plants, then, <i>know</i> what they do when they turn to the light, and is there something like consciousness
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb67">[<a href="#pb67">67</a>]</span>in a tree or a blade of grass? That is too much to assert, though one may think or
+believe so. No man can answer the question which occurs so constantly to one who lives
+among growing things; but you can hardly leave your simple experiment without formulating
+a theory that even the hidden rootlets of a rose-bush have something fundamentally
+akin to our highly developed sensibility. At present some biologists are beginning
+to assert, and confidently, though it is but an opinion, that there is no dead matter
+in the world; that the ultimate particles of which matter is composed are all intensely
+alive. And if alive, they must be sentient; that is, each must have an infinitesimal
+degree of feeling or sense perception.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>To return from our speculation, and to illustrate the <i>chumfo</i> faculty from human and animal experience: I was once sitting idly on a Nantucket
+wharf, alternately watching some hermit-crabs scurrying about in their erratic fashion
+under the tide, and an old dog that lay soaking himself in the warm sunshine. Just
+behind us, the only inharmonious creatures in the peaceful scene, some laborers were
+unloading rocks from a barge by the aid of a derrick. For more than an hour, or ever
+since I came to the wharf, the dog lay in the same <span class="pageNum" id="pb68">[<a href="#pb68">68</a>]</span>spot, and in all that time I did not see him move a muscle. He was apparently sound
+asleep. Suddenly he heaved up on his rheumatic legs, sniffed the air alertly, and
+turned his head this way, that way, as if wary of something.
+</p>
+<p>The human labor had proceeded lazily, for the day was warm; there was no change in
+the environment, so far as I could discern; the only sounds in the air were the sleepy
+lap of wavelets and the creaking of pulleys; yet my instant thought was, “That dog
+is frightened; but at what?” After a few moments of watching he moved off a dozen
+yards and threw himself flat on his side to sleep again. His body was hardly relaxed
+when a guy-rope parted, and the iron-bound mast of the derrick crashed down on the
+wharf.
+</p>
+<p>It was certainly “touch and go” for me; I felt the wind of the thing as it fell, and
+was almost knocked off the wharf; but I was not thinking then of my own close call.
+With my interest at high pitch I examined the mast, and found it lying squarely athwart
+the impression left by the dog in the dust of the road.
+</p>
+<p>“Merely a coincidence,” you say; which indicates that we are apt to think alike and
+in set formulas. That is precisely what I said at the time—a mere coincidence, but
+a startling one, which made me think of luck (a most foolish notion) <span class="pageNum" id="pb69">[<a href="#pb69">69</a>]</span>and wonder why luck should elect to light on a worthless old dog and take no heed
+of what seemed to me then a precious young man. But I have since changed my mind;
+and here is one of the many observations which made me change it.
+</p>
+<p>Years afterward my Indian guide, Simmo, was camped with a white man beside a salmon
+river. It was a rough night, and a storm was roaring over the big woods. For shelter
+they had built a bark <i>commoosie</i>, and for comfort a fire of birch logs. At about nine o’clock they turned in, each
+wrapped in his blanket, and slept soundly but lightly, as woodsmen do, after a long
+day on the trail. Some time later—hours, probably, for the fire was low, the storm
+hushed, the world intensely still—the white man was awakened by a touch, and opened
+his eyes to find his companion in a tense, listening attitude.
+</p>
+<p>“Bes’ get out of here quick, ’fore somet’ing come,” said the Indian, and threw off
+his blanket.
+</p>
+<p>“But why—what—how do you know?” queried the white man, startled but doubting, for
+he had listened and heard nothing.
+</p>
+<p>The Indian, angered as an Indian of the woods always is when you question or challenge
+his craft, made an impatient gesture. “Don’ know how; don’ know why; just know. Come!”
+he called sharply, and the white man followed him away <span class="pageNum" id="pb70">[<a href="#pb70">70</a>]</span>from the camp toward the river, where it was lighter. For several minutes they stood
+there, like two alert animals, searching the dark woods with all their senses; but
+nothing moved. The white man was beginning another fool question when there came a
+sudden dull crack, a booming of air, as a huge yellow-birch stub toppled over the
+fire and flattened the <i>commoosie</i> like a bubble.
+</p>
+<p>“Dere! Das de feller mus’ be comin’,” said Simmo. “By cosh, now, nex’ time Injun tell
+you one t’ing, p’r’aps you believe-um!” And, as if it were the most natural thing
+in the world, he stepped over death-and-destruction, kicked aside some rubbish, and
+lay down to sleep where he was before.
+</p>
+<p>“How do I explain it?” I don’t. I simply recognize a fact which I cannot explain,
+and which I will not blink by calling it another coincidence. For the fact is, as
+I judge, that a few men and many animals exercise some extra faculty which I do not
+or cannot exercise, or have access to some source of information which is closed to
+me. When I question the gifted men or women who possess this faculty, or what’s-its-name,
+I find that they are as much in the dark about it as I am. They know certain things
+without knowing how they learn; and the only word of explanation they offer is that
+they “feel” thus and so—perhaps as <span class="pageNum" id="pb71">[<a href="#pb71">71</a>]</span>a horse feels when he is holding the right direction through a blinding snowstorm,
+as he does hold it, steadily, surely, if you are wise enough not to bother him with
+the reins or your opinions.
+</p>
+<p>Simmo is one of these rare men. At one moment he is a mere child, so guileless, so
+natural, so innocent of worldly wisdom, that he is forever surprising you. Once when
+his pipe was lost I saw him fill an imaginary bowl, scratch an imaginary match, and
+puff away with a look of heavenly content on his weathered face. So you treat him
+as an unspoiled creature, humoring him, till there is difficulty or danger ahead,
+or a man’s work to be done, when he steps quietly to the front as if he belonged there.
+Or you may be talking with him by the camp-fire, elaborating some wise theory, when
+he brushes aside your book knowledge as of no consequence and suddenly becomes a philosopher,
+proclaiming a new or startling doctrine of life in the sublimely unhampered way of
+Emerson, who finished off objectors by saying, “I do not argue; I know.” But where
+Emerson gives you a mystical word or a bare assertion which he cannot possibly prove,
+Simmo has a disconcerting way of establishing a challenged doctrine by a concrete
+and undeniable fact.
+</p>
+<p>One misty day when we were astray in the wilderness, he and I, we attempted to travel
+by getting <span class="pageNum" id="pb72">[<a href="#pb72">72</a>]</span>our compass bearings from the topmost twigs of the evergreens, which slant mostly
+in one direction. After blundering around for a time without getting any nearer camp
+or familiar landmarks, Simmo remarked: “Dese twigs lie like devil. I guess I bes’
+find-um way myself.” And he did find it, and hold it even after darkness fell, by
+instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have been a matter of feeling rather
+than of sense or observation, for his only explanation was, “Oh, w’en I goin’ right
+I feel good; but w’en I goin’ wrong I oneasy.”
+</p>
+<p>This natural feeling or impression of things beyond the range of sight, this extra
+sense, or <i>chumfo</i> unity of all the senses, is probably akin to another feeling by which the animal
+or man becomes aware of distant persons, or of distant moods or emotions. The sleeping
+dog’s alarm beneath the weakened derrick, or the sleeping Indian’s uneasiness near
+the doomed birch-stub, might be explained on purely physical grounds: some tremor
+of parting fibers, some warning vibration too faint for eardrums but heavy enough
+to shake a more delicately poised nerve center, reached the inner beast or the inner
+man and roused him to impending danger. (There is a deal of babble in this explanation,
+I admit, and still a mystery at the end of it.) But when a man or a brute receives
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb73">[<a href="#pb73">73</a>]</span>knowledge not of matter, but of minds or spirits like his own; when a mother knows,
+for example, the mental state of a son who is far away, and when no material vibrations
+of any known medium can pass between them,—then all sixth-sense theories, which must
+rest on the impinging of waves upon nerve centers, no longer satisfy or explain. We
+are in the more shadowy region of thought transference or impulse transference, and
+it is in this silent, unexplored region that, as I now believe, a large part of animal
+communication goes on continually.
+</p>
+<p>That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps more reasonable, if you follow this
+unblazed trail a little farther.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p073width"><img src="images/p073.png" alt="Deer." width="193" height="230"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb74">[<a href="#pb74">74</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<hr class="fnsep">
+<div class="footnote-body">
+<div class="fndiv" id="xd32e723">
+<p class="footnote"><span class="fnlabel"><a class="noteRef" href="#xd32e723src">1</a></span> For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196–199.&nbsp;<a class="fnarrow" href="#xd32e723src" title="Return to note 1 in text.">↑</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="fndiv" id="xd32e769">
+<p class="footnote"><span class="fnlabel"><a class="noteRef" href="#xd32e769src">2</a></span> Crawford, <i>Thinking Black</i> (1904).&nbsp;<a class="fnarrow" href="#xd32e769src" title="Return to note 2 in text.">↑</a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch4" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e215">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p074.png" alt="IV" width="560" height="311"></div>
+<h2 class="label">IV</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>Natural Telepathy</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">The way of animal communication now grows dimmer and dimmer, or some readers may even
+think it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of Wonderland said when she found herself
+lengthening out like a telescope. But there is certainly a trail of some kind ahead,
+and since we are apt to lose it or to wander apart, let us agree, if we can, upon
+some familiar fact or experience which may serve as a guiding landmark. Our general
+course will be as follows: first, to define our subject, or rather, to make its meaning
+clear by illustration; second, to examine the reasonableness of telepathy from a natural
+or biological viewpoint; and finally, to go afield with eyes and minds open to see
+what <span class="pageNum" id="pb75">[<a href="#pb75">75</a>]</span>the birds or the beasts may teach us of this interesting matter.
+</p>
+<p>It seems to be fairly well established that a few men and women of uncommonly fine
+nervous organization (which means an uncommonly natural or healthy organization) have
+the power of influencing the mind of another person at a distance; and this rare power
+goes by the name of thought transference, or telepathy. The so-called crossing of
+letters, when two widely separated persons sit down at the same hour to write each
+other on the same subject, is the most familiar but not the most convincing example
+of the thing. Yes, I know the power and the example are both challenged, since there
+are scientists who deny telepathy root and branch, as well as scientists who believe
+in it implicitly; but I also know something more convincing than any second-hand denial
+or belief, having at different times met three persons who used the “gift” so freely,
+and for the most part so surely, that to ignore it would be to abandon confidence
+in my own sense and judgment. I am not trying, therefore, to investigate an opinion,
+but to understand a fact.
+</p>
+<p>To illustrate the matter by a personal experience: For many years after I first left
+home my mother would become “uneasy in her mind,” as she expressed it, whenever a
+slight accident or <span class="pageNum" id="pb76">[<a href="#pb76">76</a>]</span>danger or sickness had befallen me. If the event were to me serious or threatening,
+there was no more doubt or uneasiness on my mother’s part. She would know within the
+hour that I was in trouble of some kind, and would write or telegraph to ask what
+was the matter.
+</p>
+<p>It is commonly assumed that any such power must be a little weird or uncanny; that
+it contradicts the wholesome experience of humanity or makes fantastic addition to
+its natural faculties; and I confess that the general queerness, the lack of balance,
+the Hottentotish credulity of folk who dabble in occult matters give some human, if
+not reasonable, grounds for the assumption. Nevertheless, I judge that telepathy is
+of itself wholly natural; that it is a survival, an age-old inheritance rather than
+a new invention or discovery; that it might be exercised not by a few astonishing
+individuals, but by any normal man or woman who should from infancy cultivate certain
+mental powers which we now habitually neglect. I am led to this conviction because
+I have found something that very much resembles telepathy in frequent use throughout
+the entire animal kingdom. It is, as I think and shall try to make clear, a natural
+gift or faculty of the animal mind, which is largely subconscious, and it is from
+the animal mind that we inherit it; just as a few woodsmen <span class="pageNum" id="pb77">[<a href="#pb77">77</a>]</span>inherit the animal sense of direction, and cultivate and trust it till they are sure
+of their way in any wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled by artificial
+habit, go promptly astray whenever they venture beyond beaten trails.
+</p>
+<p>That the animals inherit this power of silent communication over great distances is
+occasionally manifest even among our half-natural domestic creatures. For example,
+that same old setter of mine, Don, who introduced us to our fascinating subject, was
+left behind most unwillingly during my terms at school; but he always seemed to know
+when I was on my way home. For months at a stretch he would stay about the house,
+obeying my mother perfectly, though she never liked a dog; but on the day I was expected
+he would leave the premises, paying no heed to orders, and go to a commanding ledge
+beside the lane, where he could overlook the highroad. Whatever the hour of my coming,
+whether noon or midnight, there I would find him waiting.
+</p>
+<p>Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly, having sent no word of my coming, my
+mother missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours later, when he did not return
+at his dinner-time or answer her repeated call, she searched for him and found him
+camped expectantly in the lane. “Oho! wise dog,” said she. “I understand now. <span class="pageNum" id="pb78">[<a href="#pb78">78</a>]</span>Your master is coming home.” And without a doubt that it would soon be needed, she
+went and made my room ready.
+</p>
+<p>If the dog had been accustomed to spend his loafing-time in the lane, one might thoughtlessly
+account for his action by the accident or hit-or-miss theory; but he was never seen
+to wait there for any length of time except on the days when I was expected. And once
+(unhappily the last time Don ever came to meet his master) he was observed to take
+up his watch within a few minutes of the hour when my train left the distant town.
+Apparently he knew when I headed homeward, but there was nothing in his instinct or
+experience to tell him how long the journey might be. So he would wait patiently,
+loyally, knowing I was coming, and my mother would take his dinner out to him.
+</p>
+<p>In many other ways Don gave the impression, if not the evidence, that he was a “mind-reader.”
+He always knew when Saturday came, or a holiday, and possibly he may have associated
+the holiday notion with my old clothes; but how he knew what luck the day had in store
+for him, as he often seemed to know the instant I unsnapped his chain in the early
+morning, was a matter that at first greatly puzzled me. If I appeared in my old clothes
+and set him free with the resolution that <span class="pageNum" id="pb79">[<a href="#pb79">79</a>]</span>my day must be spent in study or tinkering or farm work, he would bid me good morning
+and go off soberly to explore the premises, as dogs are wont to do. But when I met
+him silently with the notion that the day was my day off, to be wasted in shooting
+or fishing or roving the countryside, then in some way Don caught the notion instantly;
+he would be tugging at his leash before I reached him, and no sooner was he free than
+he was all over the yard in mad capers or making lunatic attempts to drag me off on
+our common holiday before breakfast.
+</p>
+<p>That any dog of mine should obey my word, doing gladly whatever I told him, was to
+be expected; or that in the field he should watch for a motion of my hand and follow
+it instantly, whether to charge or hold or come in or cast left or right, was a simple
+matter of training; but that this particular dog should, unknown to me, enter into
+my very feeling, was certainly not the result of education, and probably not of sight
+or sense, as we ordinarily understand the terms. When we were together of an evening
+before the fire, so long as I was working or pleasantly reading he would lie curled
+up on his own mat, without ever disturbing me till it was time for him to be put to
+bed, when he would remind me of the fact by nudging my elbow. But if an hour came
+when <span class="pageNum" id="pb80">[<a href="#pb80">80</a>]</span>I was in perplexity, or had heard bad news and was brooding over it, hardly would
+I be away in thought, forgetful of Don’s existence on a trail I must follow alone,
+when his silky head would slide under my hand, and I would find his brown eyes searching
+my face with something inexpressibly fine and loyal and wistful in their questioning
+deeps.
+</p>
+<p>Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to enter into my moods by some subtle, mysterious
+perception for which I have no name, and no explanation save the obvious one—that
+a man’s will or emotion may fill a room with waves or vibration as real as those streaming
+from a fire or a lighted candle, and that normal animals have some unused bodily faculty
+for receiving precisely such messages or vibrations. But we are not yet quite ready
+for that part of our trail; it will come later, when we can follow it with more understanding.
+</p>
+<p>Should this record seem to you too personal (I am dealing only with first-hand impressions
+of animal life), here is the story of another dog—not a blue-blooded or highly trained
+setter, but just an ordinary, doggy, neglected kind of dog—submitted by a scientific
+friend of mine, who very cautiously offers no explanation, but is content to observe
+and verify the facts:
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb81">[<a href="#pb81">81</a>]</span></p>
+<p>This second dog, Watch by name and nature, was accustomed to meet his master much
+as Don met me in the lane; but he did it much more frequently, and timed the meeting
+more accurately. He was nearer the natural animal, never having been trained in any
+way, and perhaps for that reason he retained more of the natural gift or faculty of
+receiving a message from a distance. His owner, a busy carpenter and builder, had
+an office in town, and was accustomed to return from his office or work at all hours,
+sometimes early in the afternoon, and again long after dark. At whatever hour the
+man turned homeward, Watch seemed to follow his movement as if by sight; he would
+grow uneasy, would bark to be let out if he happened to be in the house, and would
+trot off to meet his master about half-way. Though he was occasionally at fault, and
+sometimes returned to brood over the matter when his master, having started for home,
+was turned aside by some errand, his mistakes were decidedly exceptional rather than
+typical. His strange “gift” was a matter of common knowledge in the neighborhood,
+and occasionally a doubtful man would stage an experiment: the master would agree
+to mark the hour when he turned homeward, and one or more interested persons would
+keep tabs on the dog. So my scientific friend repeatedly <span class="pageNum" id="pb82">[<a href="#pb82">82</a>]</span>tested Watch, and observed him to take the road within a few moments of the time when
+his master left his office or building operations in the town, some three or four
+miles away.
+</p>
+<p>Thus far the record is clear and straight, but there is one important matter which
+my friend overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when they deal with nature, their
+mistake being to regard animals as featureless members of a class or species rather
+than as individuals. The dog’s master always came or went in a wagon drawn by a quiet
+old horse, and upon inquiry I found that between Watch and the horse was a bond of
+comradeship, such as often exists between two domestic animals of different species.
+Thus, the dog often preferred to sleep in the stall near his big chum, or would accompany
+him to the pasture when he was turned loose, and would always stand by, as if overlooking
+the operation, when the horse was being harnessed. It may well be, therefore, that
+it was from the horse rather than from the man that Watch received notice when heads
+were turned homeward; but of the fact that some kind of telepathic communication passed
+between two members of the trio there is no reasonable doubt.
+</p>
+<p>Some of my readers may make objection at this point that, though something like telepathic
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb83">[<a href="#pb83">83</a>]</span>communication appears now and then among the brutes, it should be regarded as merely
+freakish or sensational, like a two-headed calf; while others will surely ask, “Why,
+if our dogs possess such a convenient faculty, do they not use it more frequently,
+more obviously, and so spare themselves manifold discomforts or misunderstandings?”
+</p>
+<p>Such an objection is natural enough, since we judge as we live, mostly by habit; but
+it has no validity, I think, and for two reasons. First, because such animals as we
+have thus far seen exercising the faculty (and they are but a few out of many) are
+apparently normal and sensible beasts, precisely like their less-gifted fellows; and
+second, because the telepathic power itself, when one examines it without prejudice,
+appears to be wholly natural, and sane or simple as the power of thought, even of
+such rudimentary thought as may be exercised in an animal’s head. As for emotions,
+more intense and penetrating than any thought, it is hardly to be questioned that
+a man’s fear or panic may flow through his knees into the horse he is riding, or that
+emotional excitement may spread through a crowd of men without visible or audible
+expression. That a dog should receive a wordless message or impulse from his master
+at a distance of three or four miles is, fundamentally, no more unnatural than that
+one <span class="pageNum" id="pb84">[<a href="#pb84">84</a>]</span>man should feel another’s mood at a distance of three or four feet. Whether we can
+explain the phenomenon on strictly biological or scientific grounds is another matter.
+</p>
+<p>I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go cat-footedly when I enter that strange
+garret. I look with wonder on these patient, unemotional men who care nothing for
+a bear or an eagle, but who creep lower and ever lower in the scale of living things,
+searching with penetrating looks among infinitesimal microbes for the secret that
+shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us what life is. And because man
+is everywhere the same, watching these exploring biologists I remember the curious
+theology of certain South-Pacific savages, who say that God made all things, the stars
+and the world and the living man; but we cannot see Him because He is so very small,
+because a dancing mote or a grain of sand is for Him a roomy palace. Yet even with
+a modest little knowledge of biology we may find a viewpoint, I think, from which
+telepathy or thought-transference would appear as natural, as inevitable, as the forthgoing
+of light from a burning lamp.
+</p>
+<p>Thus, historically there was a time when the living cell, or the cell-of-life, as
+one biologist calls it with rare distinction, was sensitive only to pressure; <span class="pageNum" id="pb85">[<a href="#pb85">85</a>]</span>when in its darkness it knew of an external world only by its own tremblings, in response
+to vibrations which poured over it from every side. Something made it tremble, and
+that “something” had motion or life like its own. Such, imaginatively, was the sentient
+cell’s first knowledge, the result of a sense of touch distributed throughout its
+protecting surface.
+</p>
+<p>Long afterward came a time when the living cell, multiplied now a millionfold, began
+to develop special sense-organs, each a modification of its rudimentary sense of touch;
+one to receive vibrations of air, for hearing; another to catch some of the thronging
+ether waves, for seeing; a third to register the floating particles of matter on a
+sensitive membrane, for taste or smelling. By that time the cell had learned beyond
+a peradventure that the universe outside itself had light and color and fragrance
+and harmony. Finally came a day when the cell, still multiplying and growing ever
+more complex, became conscious of a new power within itself, most marvelous of all
+the powers of earth, the power to think, to feel, and to be aware of a self that registered
+its own impressions of the external world. And then the cell knew, as surely as it
+knew sound or light, that the universe held consciousness also, and some infinite
+source of thought and feeling. Such, apparently, <span class="pageNum" id="pb86">[<a href="#pb86">86</a>]</span>was the age-long process from the sentient cell to the living man.
+</p>
+<p>Since we are following a different trail, this is hardly the time or place to face
+the question how this development from mere living to conscious life took place, even
+if one were wise or rash enough to grapple with the final problem of evolution. Yet
+it may not be amiss while we “rest a pipe,” as the voyageurs say, to point out that,
+of the two possible answers to our question (aside from the convenient and restful
+answer that God made things so), only one, curiously enough, has thus far been considered
+by our physical scientists. The thousand books and theories of evolution which one
+reads are all reducible to this elementary proposition: that the simple things of
+life became complex by inner necessity. In other words, an eye became an eye, or an
+oak an oak, or a man a man, simply because each must develop according to the inner
+law of its being.
+</p>
+<p>That may be true, though the all-compelling “inner law” is still only a vague assumption,
+and the mystery of its origin is untouched; but why not by outer compulsion as reasonably
+as by inner necessity? A cell-of-life that was constantly bombarded by moving particles
+of matter might be compelled to develop a sense of touch, in order to save its precious
+life by differentiating such particles <span class="pageNum" id="pb87">[<a href="#pb87">87</a>]</span>into good and bad, or helpful and harmful. A cell over which vibrations of air and
+ether were continually passing might be forced for its own good to develop an ear
+and an eye to receive such vibrations as sound and light; and a cell over which mysterious
+waves of thought and emotion were ceaselessly flowing might be driven to comprehend
+that particular mystery by developing a thought and emotion of its own.
+</p>
+<p>I do not say that this is the right answer; I mention it merely as a speculative possibility,
+in order to get our alleged scientific mind out of its deep rut of habit by showing
+that every road has two sides, though a man habitually use only one; and that Reason
+or Law or God, or whatever you choose to call the ultimate mainspring of life, is
+quite as apt to be found on one side of the road as on the other. Inner necessity
+is not a whit more logical or more explanatory than external force or compulsion when
+we face the simple fact that an animal now sees and feels in the light instead of
+merely existing in darkness, or that primitive cells which were dimly sentient have
+now become as thinking gods, knowing good and evil.
+</p>
+<p>What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we have it and use
+it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it is a living force of some kind;
+that it projects itself <span class="pageNum" id="pb88">[<a href="#pb88">88</a>]</span>or its waves outward, as the sun cannot but send forth his light; that it affects
+men as surely as gravitation or heat or the blow of a hammer affects them,—all this
+is reasonably clear and certain. But how thought travels; what refined mental ether
+conveys it outward with a speed that makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison,
+and with a force that sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that
+the light cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep that
+our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an answer. Yet if we
+once grant the simple proposition that thought is a force, that it moves inevitably
+from its source to its object, the conclusion is inevitable that any thinking mind
+should be able to send its silent message to any other mind in the universe. There
+is nothing in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude such a possibility;
+only our present habit of speech, of too much speech, prevents us from viewing it
+frankly.
+</p>
+<p>As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when telepathy
+shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among enlightened minds, and
+language as a temporary or evolutionary makeshift. But that beckons us away to an
+imaginative flight among the clouds, and on the earth at our feet is the trail we
+must follow.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb89">[<a href="#pb89">89</a>]</span></p>
+<p>The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a master’s message
+at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one that I cannot answer. Perhaps
+the reason is obvious enough to some of the dogs, which have a sidelong way of coming
+home from their roving, as if aware they had long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty
+lies not in the dog, but in his master. Every communication has two ends, one sending,
+the other receiving; and of a thousand owners there are hardly two who know how properly
+to handle a dog either by speech or by silence. Still again, one assumption implied
+in the question is that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are all alike;
+and that common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ as widely in their
+instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly explains why one setter
+readily follows his master’s word or hand, or enters into his mood, while another
+remains hopelessly dumb or unresponsive. The telepathic faculty appears more frequently,
+as we shall see, among birds or animals that habitually live in flocks or herds, and
+I have always witnessed its most striking or impressive manifestation between a mother
+animal and her young, as if some prenatal influence or control were still at work.
+</p>
+<p>For example, I have occasionally had the good <span class="pageNum" id="pb90">[<a href="#pb90">90</a>]</span>luck to observe a she-wolf leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake
+in winter; and at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after any moving
+object that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks away to rush an animal
+that he sees moving in the woods (once that moving animal was myself), the mother
+heads him instantly if he is close to her; but if he is off before she can check him
+by a motion of her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength in chasing
+him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks steadily at the running
+cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look recalled him, whirls and
+speeds back to the pack. If the moving object be proper game afoot, the mother now
+goes ahead to stalk or drive it, while the pack follows stealthily behind her on either
+side; but if the distant object be a moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf
+must not meddle with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her way without a sound,
+and the errant cub falls into place as if he had understood her silent command.
+</p>
+<p>You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience nearer home,
+if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of young foxes. I have spent
+hours by different dens, and have repeatedly witnessed what seemed to be excellent
+discipline; but I have never yet <span class="pageNum" id="pb91">[<a href="#pb91">91</a>]</span>heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible communication
+comes later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves; and then you will often hear
+the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’ impatient crying when they are separated
+in the dark woods. While the den is their home (they seldom enter it after they once
+roam abroad) silence is the rule, and that silence is most eloquent. For hours at
+a stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some stalking imaginary
+mice or grasshoppers, others challenging their mates to mock fights or mock hunting;
+and the most striking feature of the exercise, after you have become familiar with
+the fascinating little creatures, is that the old vixen, who lies apart where she
+can overlook the play and the neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect
+control at every instant, though never a word is uttered.
+</p>
+<p>That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little brutes is constantly
+evident; but it is without voice or language. Now and then, when a cub’s capers lead
+him too far from the den, the vixen lifts her head to look at him intently; and somehow
+that look has the same effect as the she-wolf’s silent call; it stops the cub as if
+she had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If that happened once, you might overlook
+it as a <span class="pageNum" id="pb92">[<a href="#pb92">92</a>]</span>matter of mere chance; but it happens again and again, and always in the same challenging
+way. The eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches
+the vixen’s look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.
+</p>
+<p>As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the mother must
+go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her feet. Instantly the play
+stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all upturned to the greater head that bends
+to them, and there they stand in mute intentness, as if the mother were speaking and
+the cubs listening. For a brief interval that tense scene endures, exquisitely impressive,
+while you strain your senses to catch its meaning. There is no sound, no warning of
+any kind that ears can hear. Then the cubs scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother,
+without once looking back, slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth
+a foxy little face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving shadow
+in the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the face draws back,
+and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.
+</p>
+<p>You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a cub will again
+show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a <span class="pageNum" id="pb93">[<a href="#pb93">93</a>]</span>human mother could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave the house with
+the certainty that four or five lively youngsters would keep out of danger or mischief
+as completely as young fox cubs keep out of it, raising children might more resemble
+“one grand sweet song” than it does at present.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent communication
+occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or strongly social in their habits.
+The timber-wolves of the North are the first examples that occur to me, and also the
+most puzzling. They are wary brutes, so much so that those who have spent a lifetime
+near them will tell you that it is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method;
+that your meeting with him is a matter of chance or rare accident; that not only has
+he marvelously keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a nose that cannot be deceived,
+but he can also “feel” a danger which is hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such
+is the Indian verdict; and I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have
+some sympathy with it.
+</p>
+<p>The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely cunning; but it is
+naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that wolves, <span class="pageNum" id="pb94">[<a href="#pb94">94</a>]</span>more than most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one another, or even from
+a concealed hunter, who may by his excitement send forth some kind of emotional alarm.
+When you are sitting quietly in the woods, and a pack of wolves pass near without
+noticing their one enemy, though he is in plain sight, you think that they are no
+more cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true, so far as their cunning depends
+on what they may see or hear. Once when I was crossing a frozen lake in a snow-storm
+a whole pack of wolves rushed out of the nearest cover and came at me on the jump,
+mistaking me for a deer or some other game animal; which does not speak very highly
+for either their eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in all
+Canada when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with ready rifle near
+some venison which the same wolves have killed; when you see them break out of the
+woods upon the ice, running free and confident to the food which they know is awaiting
+them; when you see them stop suddenly, as if struck, though they cannot possibly see
+or smell you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to a meeting-point on another
+lake—well, then you may conclude, as I do, that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper
+than his five senses.
+</p>
+<p>Another lupine trait which first surprised and <span class="pageNum" id="pb95">[<a href="#pb95">95</a>]</span>then challenged my woodcraft is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly
+run in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where his mates
+are hunting or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The pack is made up of his
+family relatives, younger or older, all mothered by the same she-wolf; and by some
+bond or attraction or silent communication he can go straight to them at any hour
+of the day or night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and they have wandered
+over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.
+</p>
+<p>We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear presently), on the
+simple ground that the wolves, though incurable rovers, have bounds beyond which they
+seldom pass; that they return on their course with more or less regularity; and that
+in traveling, as distinct from hunting, they always follow definite runways, like
+the foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf might remember that the
+pack was due in a certain region on a certain day, and by going to that region and
+putting his nose to the runways he could quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows.
+There is nothing occult in such a process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.
+</p>
+<p>Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact, since a brute
+probably <span class="pageNum" id="pb96">[<a href="#pb96">96</a>]</span>acts more intuitively and less rationally; but it does not account for the amazing
+certainty of a wounded wolf when separated from his pack. He always does separate,
+by the way; not because the others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature, but
+because every stricken bird or beast seeks instinctively to be alone and quiet while
+his hurt is healing. I have followed with keen interest the doings of one wounded
+wolf that hid for at least two days and nights in a sheltered den, after which he
+rose from his bed and went straight as a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed
+a buck and left plenty of venison behind them.
+</p>
+<p>In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s seclusion, because
+the limping track that led from the den was but a few hours old when I found it, and
+the only track leading into the den was half obliterated by snow which had fallen
+two nights previously. How many devious miles the pack had traveled in the interim
+would be hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or roaming trails at widely separate
+points, and once I surprised them in their day-bed; but I never found the limit of
+their great range. A few days later that same limping wolf left another den of his,
+under a windfall, and headed not for the buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for
+another deer which the same pack had killed in a different <span class="pageNum" id="pb97">[<a href="#pb97">97</a>]</span>region, some eight or ten straight miles away, and perhaps twice that distance as
+wolves commonly travel.
+</p>
+<p>If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat was by the howling
+of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be true in one case, but certainly
+not in the other. For by great good luck I was near the pack, following a fresh trail
+in the gray, breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the second deer; and there was
+not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or a trail cry or even a growl of
+any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence, as wolves commonly do, their howling
+being a thing apart from their hunting. The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles
+of densely wooded hills and valleys between him and his pack.
+</p>
+<p>Do you ask, “How was it possible to know all this?” From the story the snow told.
+At daybreak I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and was following it stealthily,
+with many a cautious détour and look ahead, for they are unbelievably shy brutes;
+and so it happened that I came upon the carcass of the deer only a few minutes after
+the wolves had fed and roamed lazily off toward their day-bed. I followed them too
+eagerly, and alarmed them before I could pick the big one I wanted; whereupon they
+took to rough country, <span class="pageNum" id="pb98">[<a href="#pb98">98</a>]</span>traveling a pace that left me hopelessly far behind. When I returned to the deer,
+to read how the wolves had surprised and killed their game, I noticed the fresh trail
+of a solitary wolf coming in at right angles to the trail of the hunting pack. It
+was the limper again, who had just eaten what he wanted and trailed off by himself.
+I followed and soon jumped him, and took after him on the lope, thinking I could run
+him down or at least come near enough for a revolver-shot; but that was a foolish
+notion. Even on three legs he whisked through the thick timber so much easier than
+I could run on <span class="corr" id="xd32e1000" title="Source: show-shoes">snow-shoes</span> that I never got a second glimpse of him.
+</p>
+<p>By that time I was bound to know, if possible, how the limper happened to find this
+second deer for his comfort; so I picked up his incoming trail and ran it clear back
+to his den under the windfall, from which he had come as straight as if he knew exactly
+where he was heading. His trail was from eastward; what little air was stirring came
+from the south; so that it was impossible for his nose to guide him to the meat even
+had he been within smelling distance, as he certainly was not. The record in the snow
+was as plain as any other print, and from it one might reasonably conclude that either
+the wolves can send forth a silent food-call, with some added information, or <span class="pageNum" id="pb99">[<a href="#pb99">99</a>]</span>else that a solitary wolf may be so in touch with his pack-mates that he knows not
+only where they are, but also, in a general way, what they are doing.
+</p>
+<p>In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou is rather a witless brute; but he, too,
+has his “uncanny” moods, and one who patiently follows him, with deeper interest in
+his <i>anima</i> than in his antlered head, finds him frequently doing some odd or puzzling thing
+which may indicate a perception more subtle than that of his dull eyes or keen ears
+or almost perfect nose. Here is one example of Megaleep’s peculiar way:
+</p>
+<p>I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day on the barrens (treeless plains or
+bogs) of the Renous River in New Brunswick. For hours I had followed through alternate
+thick timber and open bog without alarming or even seeing my game. The animals were
+plainly on the move, perhaps changing their feeding-ground; and when Megaleep begins
+to wander no man can say where he will go, or where stop, or what he is likely to
+do next. Once, after trailing him eight or ten miles, twice jumping him, I met him
+head-on, coming briskly back in his own tracks, as if to see what was following him.
+From the trail I read that there were a dozen animals in the herd, and that one poor
+wounded brute lagged continually behind the others. He was going on three legs; <span class="pageNum" id="pb100">[<a href="#pb100">100</a>]</span>his right forefoot, the bone above it shattered by some blundering hunter’s bullet,
+swung helplessly as he hobbled along, leaving its pathetic record in the snow.
+</p>
+<p>On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of barrens, halting to search the trail
+ahead, my eye caught a motion far across the open, and through the field-glass I saw
+my herd for the first time, resting unsuspiciously on the farther edge of the barren,
+a full mile or more away. From my feet the trail led down through a dense fringe of
+evergreen, and then straight out across the level plain. A few of the caribou were
+lying down; others moved lazily in or out of the forest that shut in the barren on
+that side; and as I watched them two animals, yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads
+together for a pushing match, like domestic calves at play.
+</p>
+<p>Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping near the edge of it but always out
+of sight in the evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary caribou trail, the trail of
+the cripple, who had evidently wearied and turned aside to rest, perhaps knowing that
+his herd was near the end of its journey. A little farther on I jumped him out of
+a fir thicket, and watched him a moment as he hobbled deeper into the woods, heading
+away to the west. The course surprised me a little, for his mates <span class="pageNum" id="pb101">[<a href="#pb101">101</a>]</span>were northward; and at the thought I quickly found an opening in the cover and turned
+my glass upon the other caribou. Already they were in wild alarm. For a brief interval
+they ran about confusedly, or stood tense as they searched the plain and the surrounding
+woods for the source of danger; then they pushed their noses out and racked away at
+a marvelous pace, crossing the barren diagonally toward me and smashing into the woods
+a short distance ahead, following a course which must soon bring them and their wounded
+mate together. If I were dealing with people, I might say confidently that they were
+bent on finding out what the alarm was about; but as I have no means of knowing the
+caribou motive, I can only say that the two trails ran straight as a string through
+the timber to a meeting-point on the edge of another barren to the westward.
+</p>
+<p>If you would reasonably explain the matter, remember that these startled animals were
+far away from me; that the cripple and myself were both hidden from their eyes, and
+that I was moving upwind and silently. It was impossible that they should hear or
+see or smell me; yet they were on their toes a moment after the cripple started up,
+as if he had rung a bell for them. It was not the first time I had witnessed a herd
+of animals break away when, as I suspected, they had received some <span class="pageNum" id="pb102">[<a href="#pb102">102</a>]</span>silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the last; but it was the only time when
+I could trace the whole process without break or question from beginning to end. And
+when, to test the matter to the bottom, I ran the trail of the herd back to where
+they had been resting, there was no track of man or beast in the surrounding woods
+to account for their flight.
+</p>
+<p>One may explain this as a mere coincidence, which is not an explanation; or call it
+another example of the fact that wild animals are “queer,” which is not a fact; but
+in my own mind every action of the caribou and all the circumstances point to a different
+conclusion—namely, that the fear or warning or impulse of one animal was instantly
+transferred to others at a distance. I think, also, that the process was not wholly
+unconscious or subconscious, but that one animal sent forth his warning and the others
+acted upon it more or less intelligently. This last is a mere assumption, however,
+which cannot be proved till we learn to live in an animal’s skin.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p102width" id="p102"><img src="images/p102.jpg" alt="They stood tense as they searched the plain and surrounding woods for the source of danger." width="496" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>They stood tense as they searched the plain and surrounding woods for the source of
+danger.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb102a">[<a href="#pb102a">102</a>]</span></p>
+<p>It is true that the event often befalls otherwise, since you may jump one animal without
+alarming others of the same herd; and it is possible that the degree or quality of
+the alarm has something to do with its carrying power, as we feel the intense emotion
+of a friend more quickly than his ordinary <span class="pageNum" id="pb103">[<a href="#pb103">103</a>]</span>moods. In this case the solitary caribou was tremendously startled; for I was very
+near, and the first intimation he had of me, or I of him, was when my snow-shoe caught
+on a snag and I pitched over a log almost on top of him. Yet the difficulty of drawing
+a conclusion from any single instance appears in this: that I have more than once
+stalked, killed and dressed an animal without disturbing others of his kind near at
+hand (it may be that no alarm was sent out, for the animal was shot before he knew
+the danger, and in the deep woods animals pay little attention to the sound of a rifle);
+and again, when I have been trying to approach a herd from leeward, I have seen them
+move away hurriedly, silently, suspiciously, in obedience to some warning which seemed
+to spread through the woods like a contagion.
+</p>
+<p>The latter experience is common enough among hunters of big game, who are often at
+a loss to explain the sudden flight of animals that a moment ago, under precisely
+the same outward influences, were feeding or resting without suspicion. Thus, you
+may be stalking a big herd of elk, or wapiti, which are spread out loosely over half
+a mountainside. You are keen for the master bull with the noble antlers; nothing else
+interests you, more’s the pity; but you soon learn that the cunning old <span class="pageNum" id="pb104">[<a href="#pb104">104</a>]</span>brute is hidden somewhere in the midst of the herd, depending on the screen of cow-elk
+to warn him of danger to his precious skin. Waiting impatiently till this vanguard
+has moved aside, you attempt to worm your way nearer to the hidden bull. You are succeeding
+beautifully, you think, when a single cow that you overlooked begins to act uneasily.
+She has not seen or heard you, certainly, and the wind is still in your favor; but
+there she stands, like an image of suspicion, head up, looking, listening, testing
+the air, till she makes up her mind she would as lief be somewhere else, when without
+cry or grunt or warning of any kind that ears can hear she turns and glides rapidly
+away.
+</p>
+<p>Now if you value animal lore above stuffed skins, or experience above the babble of
+hunting naturalists, forget the big bull and his greed-stirring antlers; scramble
+quickly to the highest outlook at hand, and use your eyes. No alarm has been sounded;
+the vast silence is unbroken; yet for some mysterious reason the whole herd is suddenly
+on the move. To your right, to your left, near at hand or far away, bushes quiver
+or jump; alert brown forms appear or vanish like shadows, all silent and all heading
+in the direction taken by the first sentinel. One moment there are scores of elk in
+sight, feeding or resting <span class="pageNum" id="pb105">[<a href="#pb105">105</a>]</span>quietly; the next they are gone and the great hillside is lifeless. The thrill of
+that silent, moving drama has more wisdom in it, yes, and more pleasure, than the
+crash of your barbarous rifle or the convulsive kicking of a stricken beast that knows
+not why you should kill him.
+</p>
+<p>Such is the experience, known to almost every elk-hunter who has learned that life
+is more interesting than death; and I know nothing of deer nature to explain it save
+this—that the whole herd has suddenly felt and understood the silent impulse to go,
+and has obeyed it without a question, as the young wolf or fox cub obeys the silent
+return call of his watchful mother.
+</p>
+<p>Such impulses seem to be more common and more dependable among the whales, which have
+rudimentary or imperfect sense-organs, but which are nevertheless delicately sensitive
+to external impressions, to the approach of unseen danger, to the movements of the
+tiny creatures on which they feed, to changes of wind or tide and to a falling barometer,
+as if nature had given them a first-class feeling apparatus of some kind to make up
+for their poor eyes and ears. Repeatedly have I been struck by this extraordinary
+sensitiveness when watching the monstrous creatures feeding with the tide in one of
+the great bays of the Newfoundland or the Labrador coast. If I lowered a <span class="pageNum" id="pb106">[<a href="#pb106">106</a>]</span>boat to approach one of them, he would disappear silently before I could ever get
+near enough to see clearly what he was doing. That seemed odd to me; but presently
+I began to notice a more puzzling thing: at the instant my whale took alarm every
+other whale of the same species seemed to be moved by the same impulse, sounding when
+the first sounded, or else turning with him to head for the open sea.
+</p>
+<p>A score of times I tried the experiment, and commonly, but not invariably, with the
+same result. I would sight a few leviathans playing or feeding, shooting up from the
+deep, breaching half their length out of water to fall back with a tremendous <i>souse</i>; and through my glasses I would pick up others here or there in the same bay. Selecting
+a certain whale, I would glide rapidly toward him, crouching low in the dory and sculling
+silently by means of an oar over the stern. By some odd channel of perception (not
+by sight, certainly, for I kept out of the narrow range of his eye, and a whale is
+not supposed to smell or hear) he would invariably get wind of me and go down; and
+then, jumping to my feet, I would see other whales in the distance catch the instant
+alarm, some upending as they plunged to the deeps, others whirling seaward and forging
+full speed ahead.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb107">[<a href="#pb107">107</a>]</span></p>
+<p>This observation of mine is not unique, as I supposed, for later I heard it echoed
+as a matter of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I talked with my friend, Captain
+Rule, about the ways of the great creatures he had followed in the old whaling-days,
+he said, “The queerest habit of a whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul
+of, was this: when I got my boat close enough to a sperm-whale to put an iron into
+him, every other sperm-whale within ten miles would turn flukes, as if he had been
+harpooned, too.” But he added that he had not noticed the same contagion of alarm,
+not in the same striking or instantaneous way, when hunting the right or Greenland
+whale—perhaps because the latter is, as a rule, more solitary in its habits.
+</p>
+<p>Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the observation of most folk; but the winter
+birds in your own yard may some time give you a hint, at least, of the same mysterious
+transference of an impulse over wide distances. When you scatter food for them during
+a cold snap or after a storm (it is better not to feed them regularly, I think, especially
+in mild weather when their proper food is not covered with snow) your bounty is at
+first neglected except by the house sparrows and starlings. Unlike our native birds,
+these imported foreigners are easily “pauperized,” seeking <span class="pageNum" id="pb108">[<a href="#pb108">108</a>]</span>no food for themselves so long as you take care of them. They keep tabs on you, also,
+waiting patiently about the house, and soon learn what it means when you emerge from
+your back door on a snowy morning with a broom in one hand and a pan in the other.
+They are feeding greedily the moment your back is turned, and for a time they are
+the only birds at the table. When they have gorged themselves, for they have no manners,
+a few tree-sparrows and juncos flit in to eat daintily. Then suddenly the wilder birds
+appear—jays, chickadees, siskins, kinglets and, oh, welcome! a flock of bob-whites—coming
+from you know not where, in obedience to a summons which you have not heard. Some
+of these may have visited the yard in time past, and are returning to it now, hunger
+driven; but others you have never before met within the city limits, and a few have
+their accustomed dwelling in the pine woods, which are miles away. How did these hungry
+hermits suddenly learn that food was here?
+</p>
+<p>The answer to that question is simple, and entirely “sensible” if you think only of
+birds that live or habitually glean in your neighborhood. Some of them saw you scatter
+the food, or else found it by searching, while others spied these lucky ones feeding
+and came quickly to join the feast. For birds that live wider afield there is also
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb109">[<a href="#pb109">109</a>]</span>an explanation that your senses can approve, though it is probably wrong or only half
+right: from a distance they chanced to see wings speeding in the direction of your
+yard, and followed them expectantly because wings may be as eloquent as voices, the
+flight of a bird when he is heading for food being very different from the flight
+of the same bird when he is merely looking for food. But these most rare visitors,
+kinglets or pine-finches or grosbeaks or bob-whites, that never before entered your
+yard, and that would not be here now had you not thought to scatter food this morning,—at
+these you shake your head, calling it chance or Providence or mystery, according to
+your mood or disposition. To me, after observing the matter closely many times, the
+reasonable explanation of these rare visitors is that either wild birds know how to
+send forth a silent food-call or, more likely, that the excitement of feeding birds
+spreads powerfully outward, and is felt by other starving birds, alert and sensitive,
+at a distance beyond all possible range of sight or hearing. By no other hypothesis
+can I account for the fact that certain wild birds make their appearance in my yard
+at a moment when a number of other birds are eagerly feeding, and at no other time,
+though I watch for them from one year’s end to another.
+</p>
+<p>Like every other explanation, whether of stars <span class="pageNum" id="pb110">[<a href="#pb110">110</a>]</span>or starlings, this also leads to a greater mystery. The distance at which such a summoning
+call can be felt by others must be straitly limited, else would all the starving birds
+of a state be flocking to my yard on certain mornings; and the force by which the
+silent call is projected is as unknown as the rare mental ether which bears its waves
+or vibrations in all directions. Yet the problem need not greatly trouble us, since
+the answer, when it comes, will be as natural as breathing. If silent or telepathic
+communication exists in nature, and I think it surely does, the mystery before us
+is no greater than that which daily confronts the astronomer or the wireless operator.
+One measures the speed of light from Orion; the other projects his finger-touch across
+an ocean; but neither can tell or even guess the quality of the medium by which the
+light or the electric wave is carried to its destination.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p110width"><img src="images/p110.png" alt="Finch." width="173" height="201"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb111">[<a href="#pb111">111</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch5" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e225">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p111.png" alt="V" width="561" height="336"></div>
+<h2 class="label">V</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>The Swarm Spirit</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">This is a chapter on the wing drill of birds, the swarming of bees, the panics and
+unseasonal migrations of larger or smaller beasts, and other curious phenomena in
+which the wild creatures of a flock or herd all act in unison, doing the same thing
+at the same time, as if governed by a single will rather than by individual motives.
+If it should turn out that the single will were expressed in a voice or cry, or even
+in a projected impulse, then are we again face to face with our problem of animal
+communication.
+</p>
+<p>Of the fact of collective action there is no doubt, many naturalists having witnessed
+it; and there is also a strictly orthodox explanation. Thus, when <span class="pageNum" id="pb112">[<a href="#pb112">112</a>]</span>you see a large flock of crows “drilling” in the spring or autumn, rising or falling
+or wheeling all together with marvelous precision, the ornithologists resolve the
+matter by saying that the many crows act as one crow because they follow a “collective
+impulse”; that is, because the same impulse to rise or fall or wheel seizes upon them
+all at precisely the same moment. And this they tell you quite simply, as if pointing
+out an obvious fact of natural history, when in reality they are showing you the rarest
+chimera that ever looked out of a vacuum.
+</p>
+<p>Now the wonderful wing drill of certain birds has something in it which I cannot quite
+fathom or understand, not even with a miracle of collective impulse to help me; yet
+I have observed two characteristics of the ordered flight which may help to dispel
+the fog of assumption that now envelops it. The first is, that the drill is seen only
+when an uncommonly large number of birds of the same kind are gathered together, on
+a sunny day of early spring, as a rule, or in the perfection of autumn weather.
+</p>
+<p>The starlings<a class="noteRef" id="xd32e1088src" href="#xd32e1088">1</a> furnish us an excellent example <span class="pageNum" id="pb113">[<a href="#pb113">113</a>]</span>of this peculiarity. For months at a stretch you see them about the house, first in
+pairs, next in family groups, then in larger companies, made up, I think, of birds
+raised in the same neighborhood and probably all more or less related; but though
+you watch these companies attentively from dawn to dusk, you shall never see them
+going through any unusual wing drill. Then comes an hour when flocks of starlings
+appear on all sides, heading to a common center. They gather in trees here or there
+about the edges of a great field or a strip of open beach, all jabbering like the
+blackbirds, which they imitate in their cries, flitting about in ceaseless commotion,
+but apparently keeping their family or tribal organization intact. Suddenly, as at
+a signal, they all launch themselves toward the center of the field; the hundred companies
+unite in one immense flock, and presto! the drill is on. The birds are no longer individuals,
+but a single-minded myriad, which wheels or veers with such precision that the ash
+of their ten-thousand wings when they turn is like the flicker of a signal-glass in
+the sun.
+</p>
+<p>The same characteristic of uncommon numbers holds true of the crows and, indeed, of
+all other species of birds, save one, that ever practise the wing drill. Wild geese
+when in small companies, each a family unit, have a regular and beautiful <span class="pageNum" id="pb114">[<a href="#pb114">114</a>]</span>flight in harrow-shaped formation; but I have never witnessed anything like a wing
+drill among them save on one occasion, when a thousand or more of the birds were gathered
+together for a few days of frolic before beginning the southern migration. Nor have
+I ever seen the drill among thrushes or warblers or sparrows or terns or seagulls,
+which sometimes gather in uncounted numbers, but which do not, apparently, have the
+same motive that leads crows or starlings to unite in a kind of rhythmic air-dance
+on periodic occasions.
+</p>
+<p>A second marked characteristic of the wing drill is that it is invariably a manifestation
+of play or sport, and that the individual birds, though they keep the order of the
+play marvelously well, show in their looks and voices a suppressed emotional excitement.
+The drill is never seen when birds are migrating or feeding or fleeing from danger,
+though thousands of them may be together at such a time, but only when they assemble
+in a spirit of fun or exercise, and their bodily needs are satisfied, and the weather
+or the barometer is just right, and no enemy is near to trouble them. Whatever their
+motive or impulse, therefore, it is certainly not universal or even widespread among
+the birds, since most of them do not practise the drill; nor is it in the least like
+that mysterious impulse which suddenly sets all the squirrels of a region in <span class="pageNum" id="pb115">[<a href="#pb115">115</a>]</span>migration, or calls the lemmings to hurry over plain and forest and mountain till
+they all drown themselves in the distant sea; for no sooner is the brief drill over
+than the companies scatter quietly, each to its own place, and the individual birds
+are again alert, inquisitive, well balanced, precisely as they were before.
+</p>
+<p>The drill is seen at its best among the plover, I think; and, curiously enough, these
+are the only birds I know that practise it frequently, in small or large numbers and
+in all weathers. I have often watched a flock come sweeping in to my decoys, gurgling
+like a thousand fifes with bubbles in them; and never have I met these perfectly drilled
+birds, which stay with us but a few hours on their rapid journey from the far north
+to the far south, without renewed wonder at their wildness, their tameness, their
+incomprehensible ways. That you may visualize our problem before I venture an explanation,
+here is what you may see if you can forget your gun to observe nature with a deeper
+interest:
+</p>
+<p>You have risen soon after midnight, called by the storm and the shrilling of passing
+plover, and long before daylight you are waiting for the birds on the burnt-over plain.
+Your “stand” is a hole in the earth, hidden by a few berry-bushes; and before you,
+at right angles with the course of the storm (for plover always wheel to head into
+the <span class="pageNum" id="pb116">[<a href="#pb116">116</a>]</span>wind when they take the ground), are some scores of rudely painted decoys. As the
+day breaks you see against the east a motion as of wings, and your call rings out
+wild and clear, to be echoed on the instant. In response to your whistle the distant
+motion grows wildly fantastic; it begins to whirl and eddy, as if a wisp of fog were
+rolling swiftly down-wind; only in some mysterious fashion the fog holds together,
+and in it are curious flickerings. Those are plover, certainly; no other birds have
+that perfect unity of movement; and now, since they are looking for the source of
+the call they have just heard, you throw your cap in the air or wave a handkerchief
+to attract attention. There is an answering flash of white from the under side of
+their wings as the plover catch your signal and turn all at once to meet it. Here
+they come, driving in at terrific speed straight at you!
+</p>
+<p>It is better to stop calling now, because the plover will soon see your decoys; and
+these birds when on the ground make no sound except a low, pulsating whistle of welcome
+or recall. This is uttered but seldom, and unless you can imitate it, which is not
+likely, your whistling will do no good. Besides, it could not possibly be heard. Listen
+to that musical babel, and let your nerves dance to it! In all nature there is nothing
+to compare for utter wildness with the fluting of incoming plover.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb117">[<a href="#pb117">117</a>]</span></p>
+<p>On they come, hundreds of quivering lines, which are the thin edges of wings, moving
+as one to a definite goal. Their keen eyes caught the first wave of your handkerchief
+in the distance; and now they see their own kind on the ground, as they think, and
+their babel changes as they begin to talk to them. Suddenly, and so instantaneously
+that it makes you blink, there is a change of some kind in every quivering pair of
+wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are sure that the plover are still
+coming, for you did not see them turn; but the lines grow smaller, dimmer, and you
+know that every bird in the flock has whirled, as if at command, and is now heading
+straight away. You put your fingers to your lips and send out the eery plover call
+again and again; but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better whistling. The quivering
+lines are now all blurred in one; with a final flicker they disappear below a rise
+of ground; the birds are gone, and you cease your vain calling. Then, when you are
+thinking you will never see that flock again, a cloud of wings shoot up from the plain
+against the horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous flight, not as a thousand
+individuals but as a unit, and the lines grow larger, clearer, as the plover come
+sweeping back to your decoys once more.
+</p>
+<p>Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it repeatedly <span class="pageNum" id="pb118">[<a href="#pb118">118</a>]</span>on the Nantucket moors, many years ago. The only way I can explain the instantaneous
+change of flight is by the assumption, no longer strange or untested, that from some
+alarmed plover on the fringe or at the center of the flock a warning impulse is sent
+out, and the birds all feel and obey it as one bird. That the warning is a silent
+one I am convinced, for it seems impossible that any peculiar whistle could be heard
+or understood in that wild clamor of whistling. Nor is it a satisfactory hypothesis
+that one bird sees the danger or suspects the quality of the decoys, and all the others
+copy his swift flight; for in that case there must be succession or delay or straggling
+in the turning, and the impression left on the eye is not of succession, but of almost
+perfect unity of movement.
+</p>
+<p>The only other explanation of the plovers’ action is the one commonly found in the
+bird-books, to which I have already briefly referred, and which we must now examine
+more narrowly. It assumes that all the birds of a migrating flock are moved not by
+individual wills, but by a collective impulse or instinct, which affects them all
+alike at the same instant. In support of this favorite theory we are told to consider
+the bees, which are said to have no individual motives, and no need for them, since
+they blindly follow a swarm or hive instinct <span class="pageNum" id="pb119">[<a href="#pb119">119</a>]</span>that makes them all precisely alike in their actions. The same swarm instinct appears
+often in the birds, but less strongly, because they are more highly developed creatures,
+with more need and therefore more capacity for individual incentive.
+</p>
+<p>This illustration of the hive is offered so confidently and accepted so readily, as
+if it were an axiom of natural history, that one hesitates to disturb the ancient
+idol in its wonted seat. Yet one might argue that any living impulse, whether in bees
+or birds, must proceed from a living source, and, if that be granted, speculate on
+the absorbing business of a nature or a heaven that should be perpetually interfering
+in behalf of every earthly flock or swarm or herd by sending the appropriate impulse
+at precisely the right moment. And when our speculation is at an end, I submit the
+fact that, when I have broken open a honey-tree in the woods, one bee falls upon the
+sweets to gorge himself withal, while another from the same swarm falls angrily upon
+me and dies fighting; which seems to upset the collective-impulse idol completely.
+</p>
+<p>I must confess here that I know very little about bees. They are still a mystery to
+me, and I would rather keep silence about them until I find one bee that I fancy I
+understand, or one man who offers something better than a very hazy or mystical <span class="pageNum" id="pb120">[<a href="#pb120">120</a>]</span>explanation of a bee’s extraordinary action. Yet I have watched long hours at a hive,
+have handled a swarm without gloves or mask, and have performed a few experiments—enough
+to convince me that the collective-impulse theory does not always hold true to fact
+even among our honey-makers. Indeed, I doubt that it ever holds true, or that there
+is in nature any such mysterious thing as a swarm or flock or herd impulse.
+</p>
+<p>In the first place, the bees of the same swarm do not look alike or act alike except
+superficially; at least I have not so observed them. Study the heads or the feet of
+any two bees under a glass, and you shall find as much variety as in the heads or
+feet of any other two creatures of the same kind, whether brute or human. The lines
+of difference run smaller, to be sure; but they are always there. In action also the
+bees are variable; they do marvelously wise things at one moment, or marvelously stupid
+things at another; but they do not all and always do the same thing under the same
+circumstances, for when I have experimented with selected bees from the same hive
+I have noticed very different results; which leads me to suspect that even here I
+am dealing with individuals rather than with detached fragments of a swarm. It is
+hard, for example, to make a trap so simple that an imprisoned bee will find his way
+out of it; <span class="pageNum" id="pb121">[<a href="#pb121">121</a>]</span>but when by great ingenuity you do at last make a trap so very simple that it seems
+any creature with legs must walk out by the open door, perhaps one bee in five will
+do the trick; while the other four wait patiently until they die for more simplicity.
+</p>
+<p>Again, while your eye often sees unity of action among the wild creatures, neither
+your reading nor your own reason will ever reveal a scrap of positive evidence that
+there is in nature any such convenient thing (humanly convenient, that is, for explanations)
+as a swarm or flock instinct; though, like the mythical struggle for existence, we
+are forever hearing about it or building theories upon it. So far as we know anything
+about instinct, it is neither collective nor incorporeal. It is, to use the definition
+of Mark Hopkins, which is as good as another and beautifully memorable, “a propensity
+prior to experience and independent of instruction.” And the only needful addition
+to this high-sounding definition is, that it is a “propensity” lodged in an individual,
+every time. It is not and cannot be lodged in a swarm or a hive; you must either put
+it into each of two bees or else put it between them, leaving them both untouched.
+In other words, the swarm instinct has logically no abiding-place and no reality;
+it is a castle in the air with no solid foundation to rest on.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb122">[<a href="#pb122">122</a>]</span></p>
+<p>On its practical or pragmatic side also the theory is a failure, since the things
+bees are said to do in obedience to an incorporeal swarm instinct are more naturally
+and more reasonably explained by other causes. Bees swarm, apparently, in the lead
+or under the influence of individuals; and it needs only a pair of eyes to discover
+that there are plenty of individual laggards and blunderers in the process. They grow
+angry not all at once, but successively; not because a swarm instinct impels them
+to anger, but because one irritated bee gives off a pungent odor or raises a militant
+buzzing, and the others smell the odor or hear the buzzing and are inflamed by it,
+each through his own senses and by the working of his own motives. On a hot day you
+will see a few bees fanning air into the hive with their wings, and when these grow
+weary others take their places; but if it were a swarm instinct that impelled them,
+you would see all the bees fanning or all sweltering at the same moment. As for the
+honey-making instinct, on any early-spring day you will find a few bees working in
+the nearest greenhouse, while the others, which are supposed to be governed by the
+same collective impulse, are comfortably torpid in the hive or else eating honey faster
+than these enterprising ones can make it.
+</p>
+<p>I judge, therefore, that the communistic bees <span class="pageNum" id="pb123">[<a href="#pb123">123</a>]</span>have some individual notions, and any show of individuality is so at variance with
+the common-impulse theory that it seems to illustrate Spencer’s definition of tragedy,
+which is, “a theory slain by a fact.” In short, bees have our common social instinct
+highly developed, or overdeveloped, and possibly they have also, like all the higher
+orders, a stronger or weaker instinct of imitation; but these are very different matters,
+more natural and more consistent with the facts than is the alleged swarm instinct.
+</p>
+<p>A scientific friend, the most observant ornithologist I have ever met, has just offered
+an interesting explanation of the flock or herd phenomena we are here considering.
+He finds little evidence of a swarm instinct, as distinct from our familiar social
+instinct; but he has often marveled at the wing drill of birds, and has twice witnessed
+an alarm or warning of danger spread silently among a herd of scattered beasts; and
+he accounts for the observed facts by the supposition that the minds (or what corresponds
+to the minds) of the lower orders are often moved not from within, but from without—that
+is, not by instinct or by sense impressions, not by what they or others of their kind
+may see or hear, but by some external and unknown influence. My caribou rushed away,
+he thinks, and my incoming plover turned as one <span class="pageNum" id="pb124">[<a href="#pb124">124</a>]</span>bird from my decoys, because a warning impulse fell upon them at a moment when they
+were in danger, but knew it not; and they obeyed it, as they obey all their impulses,
+without conscious thought or knowledge of what they are doing or why they are doing
+it.
+</p>
+<p>Here is some suggestion of a very modern psychology which is inclined to regard the
+mind as a thought-receiving rather than as a thought-producing instrument, and with
+that I have some sympathy; but here is also a rejuvenation of the incorporeal swarm
+instinct and other fantastic or romantic notions of animals which preclude observation.
+If the <i>anima</i> of a bird or beast is so constituted that it can receive impulses from a mysterious
+and unknown source, what is to prevent it from receiving such silent impulses from
+another <i>anima</i> like itself? And why seek an unseen agent for the warning to my caribou or my plover
+when one of the creatures saw the danger and was enough moved by it to sound a mental
+tocsin?
+</p>
+<p>The trouble with my friend’s explanation, and with all others I have thus far heard
+or read, is twofold. First, like the swarm-impulse theory, it really explains nothing,
+but avoids one mystery or difficulty by taking refuge in another. There was a Hindu
+philosopher who used to teach, after the manner of his school, that the earth stood
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb125">[<a href="#pb125">125</a>]</span>fast because it rested on the back of a great elephant; which was satisfactory till
+a thoughtful child asked, “But the elephant, what does he stand on?” So when I see
+intelligent caribou or plover fleeing from an unsensed danger, and am told that they
+have received an impulse from without, I am bound to ask, “Where did that impulse
+come from, and who sent it?” For emotional impulses do not drop like rain from the
+clouds, or fall like apples from unseen trees; they must have their source in a living,
+intelligent being of some kind, who must feel the impulse before sending it to others.
+No other explanation is humanly comprehensible.
+</p>
+<p>This leads to the second objection to the theory of external impulse, and to every
+other notion of a collective or incorporeal swarm instinct—namely, that it contradicts
+all the previous experience of the wild creature, or at least all educative experience,
+which lies plain and clear to our observation. To each bird and animal are given individual
+senses, individual wit and a personal <i>anima</i>; and each begins his mortal experience not in a great flock or herd, but always in
+solitary fashion, under the care and guidance of a mother animal that has a saving
+knowledge of a world in which the little one is a stranger. Thus, I watch the innocent
+fawn when it begins to follow <span class="pageNum" id="pb126">[<a href="#pb126">126</a>]</span>the wary old doe, or the fledgling snipe as it leaves the nest under expert guidance,
+or the wonder-eyed cub coming forth from its den at the call of the gaunt old she-wolf.
+In each case I see a mother intelligently caring for her young, leading them to food,
+warding them from danger, calling them now to assemble or now to scatter; and before
+my eyes these ignorant youngsters quickly learn to adapt themselves to the mother’s
+ways and to obey her every signal. Sometimes I see them plainly when some manner of
+silent communication passes among them (something perhaps akin to that which passes
+when you catch a friend’s eye and send your thought or order to him across a crowded
+room), and it has even seemed to me, as recorded elsewhere in our observation of wolf
+and fox dens, that the young understand this silent communication more readily than
+they learn the meaning of audible cries expressive of food or danger.
+</p>
+<p>Such is the wild creature’s earliest experience, his training to accommodate himself
+to the world, and to ways that wiser creatures of his own kind have found good in
+the world. When his first winter draws near he is led by his mother to join the herd
+or pack or migrating flock; and he is then ready not for some mysterious new herd
+or flock instinct, but for the same old signals that have served well to guide or
+warn him ever since <span class="pageNum" id="pb127">[<a href="#pb127">127</a>]</span>he was born. I conclude, therefore, naturally and reasonably, that my caribou broke
+away and my incoming plover changed their flight because one of their number detected
+danger and sent forth a warning impulse, which the others obeyed promptly because
+they were accustomed to just such communications. There was nothing unnatural or mysterious
+or even new in the experience. So far as I can see or judge, there is no place or
+need for a collective herd or flock impulse, and the birds and beasts have no training
+or experience by which to interpret such an impulse if it fell upon them out of heaven.
+</p>
+<p>Our human experience, moreover, especially that which befalls on the borderland of
+the subconscious world where the wild creatures mostly live, may give point and meaning
+to our natural philosophy. There are emotions, desires, impulses which may be conveyed
+by shouting; and there are others which may well be told without shouting, or even
+without words. A cheerful man radiates cheerfulness; a strong man, strength; a brave
+man, courage (we do not know to what extent or with what limitations); and a woman
+may be more irritated by a man who says nothing than by a man who says too much. These
+common daily trials may be as side-lights on the tremendous fact that love, fear,
+hate,—every intense emotion is a <span class="pageNum" id="pb128">[<a href="#pb128">128</a>]</span>force in itself, a force to be reckoned with, apart from the cry or the look by which
+it is expressed; that all such emotions project themselves outward; and that possibly,
+or very probably, there is some definite medium to convey them, as an unknown medium
+which we call “ether” conveys the waves of light.
+</p>
+<p>It is true that we habitually receive such emotional impulses from others by means
+of our eyes or ears; but sometimes we apparently imbibe them through our skin, as
+Anthony Trollope said he learned Latin, and once in a way we receive them from another
+without knowing or thinking of the process at all. It is noteworthy that the most
+companionable people in the world are silent people, especially a silent friend, and
+that the silence of any man is invariably more eloquent than his speech. The silence
+of one man rests you like a melody; the silence of another bores you to yawning, perhaps
+because it is a “dead” silence; the quietude of a third excites your curiosity to
+such an extent that, for once in your life, you behave like a perfectly natural animal;
+that is, you go round the silent one, as it were, view him mentally from all sides,
+sniff at his opinions from leeward, whir your wings in his face like a sparrow, or
+stamp your foot at him like a rabbit—all this to stir him up and to uncover what interesting
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb129">[<a href="#pb129">129</a>]</span>thing lies behind his silence. And why? Simply because every living man is silently,
+unconsciously projecting his real thought or feeling, and you are unconsciously understanding
+it or else making a vain conscious effort in that direction.
+</p>
+<p>Such experiences are commonly confined to a room, to the circle of an open fire; but
+they are not limited by necessity to any narrow reach, since there is nothing in a
+wall to hinder a man’s love or hate from passing through, or in the air to check its
+far-going, or in the nature of another man to prevent its reception. The influence
+of one person’s unvoiced will or purpose or warning or summons upon another person
+at a distance, should it turn out more common than we now believe possible because
+of our habit of speech, would be nothing unnatural or mysterious, but rather a true
+working of the subconscious or animal mind, which had its own way of communication
+before ever speech was invented.
+</p>
+<p>Whitman, who sometimes got hold of the tail end of philosophy (and who was wont to
+believe he could drag it out, like a trapped woodchuck, and whirl it around his head
+with barbaric whoops), was often seen at the burrow of this thought-transference doctrine:
+</p>
+<div class="lgouter">
+<p class="line">These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb130">[<a href="#pb130">130</a>]</span></p>
+<p class="line">Why are there men and women that while they are near me the sunlight expands my blood?
+</p>
+<p class="line">Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
+</p>
+<p class="line">Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon
+me?
+</p>
+<p class="line">What is it that I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
+</p>
+<p class="line">What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
+</p>
+<p class="line">What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?
+</p>
+<p class="line">What gives me to be free to woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free
+to mine?</p>
+</div>
+<p class="first">Again, our familiar human experience may throw some clearer light than ever comes
+from the laboratory of animal psychologists upon the action of gregarious brutes in
+their so-called blind panics, when they are said to be governed by some extraneous
+or non-individual herd impulse. How such a theory originated is a puzzle to one who
+has closely observed animals in the open, since their panics are never “blind,” and
+their “extraneous” impulse may often be traced to an alarmed animal of their own kind,
+or even to an excited human being, whose emotions are animal-like both in their manifestation
+and in their irritating effect. A dog is more easily roused by human than by canine
+excitement. A frightened rider sends his fear or irresolution in exaggerated form
+into the horse beneath him. The herd of swine that ran down a steep place into the
+sea were <span class="pageNum" id="pb131">[<a href="#pb131">131</a>]</span>possessed, I should say, not by exorcised demons, but by the hysteria received directly
+from some man or woman of the excited crowd in the immediate neighborhood. Panic is
+more infectious than any fever, and knows no barriers between brute and human. Indeed,
+in a frightened crowd in the Subway, in a theater where smoke appears, or in any other
+scene of emotional excitement, you may in a few minutes observe actions more panicky,
+more suggestive of a herd impulse (if there be such a fantastic thing in orderly nature),
+than can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild animals.
+</p>
+<p>In my head at this moment is the vivid impression of a night when I was caught and
+carried away by a crowd of Italian socialists, twenty thousand frenzied men and a
+few ferocious women, that first eddied like a storm-tide about the great square under
+the cathedral at Milan, howling, shrieking, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously
+through choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at the innocent roof of the railroad
+station, as at a symbol of government. The roof was of glass, and the clattering smash
+of it seemed to get on the nerves of men, like the cry of <i>sick-em!</i> to an excited dog, rousing them to a senseless fury of destruction. Clear and thrilling
+above the tumult a bugle sang, like a note from heaven, and into <span class="pageNum" id="pb132">[<a href="#pb132">132</a>]</span>the seething mass of humanity charged a squadron of cavalry, striking left or right
+with the flats of their sabers, raising a new hubbub of shrieks and imprecations as
+the weaker were trampled down. Fear? That crowd knew no more of fear just then than
+an upturned hive of bees. They met the charge with a roar, a hoarse, solid shout that
+seemed to sweep the cavalry away like smoke in the wind. Unarmed men swarmed at the
+horses like enraged baboons, hurling stones or curses as they went. The rush ended
+in a triumphant yell, and riderless horses, their eyes and nostrils aflame, went plunging,
+kicking, squealing through the pandemonium.
+</p>
+<p>There must have been something tremendously <i>animal</i> in the scene, after all; for when I recall it now I see, as if Memory had carved
+her statue of the event, an upreared horse with a crumpled rider toppling from the
+saddle; and I hear not the shouts or curses of men, but the horrible scream of a maddened
+brute.
+</p>
+<p>It was the night, many years ago, when news of disaster to the Italian army at Adowa
+broke loose, after being long suppressed, and I learned then for the first time what
+emotional excitement means when the gates are all down. One had to hold himself against
+it, as against a flood or a mighty wind. To yield, to lose self-control even for an
+instant, was to find oneself howling, reaching <span class="pageNum" id="pb133">[<a href="#pb133">133</a>]</span>for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy, lifting a bare fist against charging horse or
+swinging steel, like the other lunatics. I caught a man by the shoulders, held him,
+and bade him in his own language tell me what the row was about; but he only stared
+at me wildly, his mouth open. I caught another, and he struck at my face; a third,
+and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one gave me a half-coherent answer, a man
+whom I dragged from under a saber and pushed into a side-street. His dear Ambrogio
+had been conscripted by the government, he howled (I suppose they had sent his son
+or brother with a disaffected Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and they
+were all robbers, oppressors, murderers—he finished by jerking loose from my grasp
+and hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again.
+</p>
+<p>Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that amazing scene and knowing nothing of
+its motive, I might easily have concluded that some mysterious herd impulse was driving
+all these creatures to they knew not what; but, being human, I knew perfectly well
+that even this unmanageable crowd had taken its cue from some leader; that the senseless
+emotion which inflamed them had originated with individuals, who had some ground for
+their passion; and that from the individual the excitement spread in pestilential
+fashion until the whole <span class="pageNum" id="pb134">[<a href="#pb134">134</a>]</span>mob caught it and bent to it, as a field of grass bends to the storm.
+</p>
+<p>Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of logic through a long digression), when
+I go as a man among caribou or wolves or plover or crows, and see the whole herd or
+pack or flock acting as one, as if swayed by a single will, I see no reason why I
+should evoke an incorporeal swarm impulse, or “call a spirit from the vasty deep”
+of the unknown to explain their similarity of action, since there are natural causes
+which may account for the matter perfectly—familiar causes, too, which still influence
+men and women as they influence the remote wood folk.
+</p>
+<p>No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is rather an attempt to banish the delusion
+that there is any such thing as a distinct animal psychology. Science has many forms,
+and still plenty of delusions, but there is a basic principle to which she holds steadily—namely,
+that Nature is of one piece because her laws are constant. It follows that, if you
+know anything of a surety about your own mind, you may confidently apply the knowledge
+to any other mind in the universe, whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath
+or the waters under the earth. The only question is, How far may the term “mind” be
+properly applied to the brute?
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb135">[<a href="#pb135">135</a>]</span></p>
+<p>That unanswered question does not immediately concern us, for in speaking of mind
+we commonly mean the conscious or reasoning human article, and we are dealing here
+with the subconscious mind, which seems to work after the same fashion whether it
+appears on two legs or four. A dog does not know <i>why</i> he becomes excited in a commotion that does not personally concern him, or why he
+feels impelled to hasten to an outcry from an unknown source, or why he looks up,
+contrary to all his habits, when everybody else is looking up; and neither does a
+man know why he does just such things. Man and brute both act in obedience to something
+deeper, more primal and more dependable than reason, and in this subconscious field
+they are akin; otherwise it would be impossible for a man ever to train or to understand
+a brute, and our companionable dogs would be as distant as the seraphim.
+</p>
+<p>When, therefore, the same unreasoning actions that are attributed to a mysterious
+collective impulse among birds or animals are found among men to depend on a succession
+of individual impulses, it is good psychology as well as good natural history to dismiss
+the whole herd instinct as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social and imitative
+instincts, the contagion of excitement, the outward projection of emotional impulses,
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb136">[<a href="#pb136">136</a>]</span>the sensitive bodily nature of an animal which enables him to respond to such impulses
+even when they are unaccompanied by a voice or cry,—these are comparatively simple
+and “sensible” matters which explain all the phenomena of flock or herd life more
+naturally and more reasonably.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p136width"><img src="images/p136.png" alt="Two young foxes." width="207" height="232"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb137">[<a href="#pb137">137</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<hr class="fnsep">
+<div class="footnote-body">
+<div class="fndiv" id="xd32e1088">
+<p class="footnote"><span class="fnlabel"><a class="noteRef" href="#xd32e1088src">1</a></span> I am speaking of starlings as they now appear in southern New England. They were brought
+from Europe a few years ago, and are multiplying at an alarming rate. They have formed
+some curious new habits here; even their voices are very different from the voices
+of starlings as I have heard them in Europe.&nbsp;<a class="fnarrow" href="#xd32e1088src" title="Return to note 1 in text.">↑</a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch6" class="div1 last-child chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e235">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p137.png" alt="VI" width="554" height="334"></div>
+<h2 class="label">VI</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>Where Silence is Eloquent</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Looking back a moment on our trail of animal “talk” before following it onward, we
+see, first, that birds and beasts have certain audible cries which convey a more or
+less definite meaning of food or danger or assembly; and second, that they apparently
+have also some “telepathic” faculty of sending emotional impulses to others of their
+kind at a distance. The last has not been proved, to be sure; we have seen little
+more than enough to establish it as a working hypothesis; but whether we study science
+or history or an individual bird or beast, it is better to follow some integrating
+method or principle than to blunder around in a chaos of unrelated details. <span class="pageNum" id="pb138">[<a href="#pb138">138</a>]</span>And the hypothesis of silent communication certainly “works,” since it helps greatly
+to clarify certain observed phenomena of animal life that are otherwise darkly mysterious.
+</p>
+<p>When the same dimly defined telepathic power appears in a man or woman—so rarely that
+we are filled with wonder, as in the shadow of a great mystery or a great discovery—it
+is not a new but a very old matter, I think, being merely a survival or reappearance
+of a faculty that may have once been in common use among gregarious creatures. All
+men seem to have some hint or suggestion of telepathy in them, as shown by their ability
+to “speak with their eyes” or to influence their children by a look; and the few who
+have enough of it to be conspicuous receive it, undoubtedly, by some law or freak
+of heredity, such as enables one man in a million to wag his ears, or one in a thousand
+to follow a subconscious sense of direction so confidently that, after wandering about
+the big woods all day, he turns at nightfall and heads straight for his camp like
+a homing pigeon. The rest of us, meanwhile, by employing speech exclusively to express
+thought or emotion, and by habitually depending on five senses for all our impressions
+of the external world, have not only neglected but even lost all memory of the gift
+that once was ours. As an inevitable consequence <span class="pageNum" id="pb139">[<a href="#pb139">139</a>]</span>Nature has taken her gift away, as she atrophies a muscle that is no longer used,
+or devitalizes the nerve of sight in creatures, such as the fishes of Mammoth Cave,
+that have lived long time in darkness.
+</p>
+<p>In previous chapters we have noted, as rare examples of telepathy in human society,
+that a mother may at times know when an absent son or husband is in danger, or that
+an African savage often knows when a stranger is approaching his village hid in the
+jungle; but there is another manifestation of the same faculty which is much more
+common, and which we have thus far overlooked, leaving it as an odd and totally unrelated
+thing without explanation. I refer to the man, known in almost every village, who
+has some special gift for training or managing animals, who seems to know instinctively
+what goes on in a brute’s head, and who can send his own will or impulse into the
+lower mind. I would explain that unrelated man, naturally, by the simple fact or assumption
+that he has inherited more than usual of the animals’ gift of silent communication.
+</p>
+<p>I knew one such man, a harmless, half-witted creature, who loved to roam the woods
+alone by day or night, and whom the wild birds and beasts met with hardly a trace
+of the fear or suspicion they manifest in presence of other human beings. <span class="pageNum" id="pb140">[<a href="#pb140">140</a>]</span>He was always friendly, peaceable, childlike, and unconsciously or subconsciously,
+I think, he could tame or influence these wild spirits by letting them feel his own.
+</p>
+<p>So also could an old negro, an ex-slave, with whom I used to go fox-hunting in my
+student days. He could train a dog or a colt in a tenth part of the time required
+by ordinary men, and he used no whip or petting or feeding, or any other device commonly
+employed by professional trainers. At times, indeed, his animals acted as if trained
+from the moment he touched or spoke to them. He had a mongrel lot of dogs, cats, chickens,
+pigs, cows and horses; but they were a veritable happy family (on a cold night his
+cats would sleep with a setting hen, if they could find one, or otherwise with the
+foxhounds), and to see them all running to meet “Uncle” when he came home, or following
+at his heels or doing what he told them, was to wonder what strange animal language
+he was master of.
+</p>
+<p>At daybreak one winter morning I entered the old negro’s kitchen very quietly, and
+had a fire going and coffee sending forth its aroma before I heard him creaking down
+the stairs. I had traveled “across lots,” making no sound in the new-fallen snow,
+and, as I approached the house, had purposely kept its dark bulk between me and <span class="pageNum" id="pb141">[<a href="#pb141">141</a>]</span>the dogs, which were asleep in their kennel some distance away. For a time all was
+quiet as only a winter dawn can be; but as we sat down to breakfast one of the hounds
+with a big bass voice suddenly broke out in an earth-shaking jubilation. The other
+hounds quickly caught up the clamor, yelling as if they had just jumped a fox, while
+two dogs of another breed were strangely silent; and then ’Poleon added his bit to
+the tumult by stamping, whinnying and finally kicking lustily on the boards of his
+stall. ’Poleon, by the way, was an old white horse that Uncle used to ride (he was
+“gittin’ too rheumaticky,” he said, to hunt with me afoot), and this sober beast was
+fair crazy to join the chase whenever a fox was afoot.
+</p>
+<p>The negro paid no attention to the noise; but as it went on increasing, and ’Poleon
+whinnyed more wildly, and the big-voiced hound kept up a continuous bellow that might
+have roused the seven sleepers, the unseemly racket got on my nerves, so early in
+the day.
+</p>
+<p><span class="corr" id="xd32e1247" title="Source: ‘">“</span>What the mischief is the matter with Jum this morning?” I demanded.
+</p>
+<p>“Matter? Mischief?” echoed Uncle, as if surprised I did not understand such plain
+animal talk. “Why, ol’ Jum’s a-gwine fox-huntin’ dis mawny. He reckons he knows what
+we-all’s up to: and now de yother dawgs an’ ’Poleon dey <span class="pageNum" id="pb142">[<a href="#pb142">142</a>]</span>reckons dey knows it, too. Jum’s tole um. Dat’s all de matter an’ de mischief.”
+</p>
+<p>“But how in the world should he know? You never go hunting now unless I tempt you,
+and none of the dogs saw or heard me come in,” I objected.
+</p>
+<p>Uncle chuckled at that, chuckled a long time, as if it were a good joke. “Trust ol’
+Jum ter know when we-all’s gwine fox-huntin’,” he said. “You jes’ trust <i>him</i>. I specks he kinder pick de idee outer de air soon’s we thunk it, same’s he pick
+a fox scent. ’Tain’t no use tryin’ ter lie ter Jum, ’cause you can’t fool ’im nohow.
+No, sir, when dat ol’ dawg’s eroun’, you don’ wanter think erbout nothin’ you don’
+want ’im ter know.”
+</p>
+<p>I had often marveled at Uncle, but now suddenly I thought I understood him. In his
+unconscious confession that he thought or felt with his animals, rather than spoke
+English to them, was probably the whole secret of his wonderful gift of training.
+</p>
+<p>The same “secret” is shared by the few men who have the gift of managing horses, and
+who can do more by a word or even a look than another man by bit and harness. I have
+heard the gift described by a professional horse-trainer as the “power of the human
+eye”; but that is nonsense set to melodrama. An eye is a bit of jelly, and <span class="pageNum" id="pb143">[<a href="#pb143">143</a>]</span>means nothing without a will or communicating impulse behind it. When the spirit of
+a horse is once broken (and most of them are broken rather than trained by our methods)
+almost anybody can manage him, the blind as well as the seeing; but when a horse keeps
+the spirit of his wild ancestors, their timidity, their flightiness, their hair-trigger
+tendency to shy or to bolt, then I envy the man who can cross the gulf of ages and
+put something of his own steadiness into the nervous brute.
+</p>
+<p>This steadying process seems to be wholly a matter of spirit, so far as I have observed
+it, and whatever passes from man to brute passes directly, without need of audible
+speech. For example, a friend of mine, a very quiet man of few words, once brought
+home a magnificent “blooded” horse which he had bought for a song because “nobody
+could handle him.” The horse was not vicious in any way, but seemed to have a crazy
+impulse to run himself to death—an impulse so strong that even now, when he is past
+twenty years old, he cannot be turned loose for a moment in a farm pasture. He had
+never been driven save with a powerful curb; even so, he would drag the carriage along
+by the reins, and an hour of such driving left a strong man’s arms half paralyzed
+by the strain. Yet at the first trial his new owner put a soft rubber bit in his mouth,
+flipped the lines <span class="pageNum" id="pb144">[<a href="#pb144">144</a>]</span>loosely across his back, and controlled him by a word.
+</p>
+<p>Some years later I was riding behind that same horse, jogging quietly along a country
+road, when my friend, with an odd twinkle in his eye, said, “Take the reins a moment
+while I get out this robe.” I took them, and what followed seemed like magic or bedevilment.
+I had noticed that the reins were loose, just “feeling” the horse’s mouth; I shifted
+them to my hand very quietly, without stirring a hair, and blinders on the bridle
+prevented the horse from seeing the transfer. Yet hardly had I touched them when something
+from my hand (or from my soul, for aught I know) flowed along the leather and filled
+the brute with fire. He flung up his head, as if I had driven spurs into him, and
+was away like a shot.
+</p>
+<p>Again, I was crossing the public square of Nantucket one morning when I saw a crowd
+of excited men and boys eddying at a safe distance around a horse—an ugly, biting
+brute that had once almost torn the side of my face off when I passed too close to
+him, minding my own affairs. Now he was having one of his regular tantrums, squealing,
+kicking, plunging or backing, while his driver, who had leaped to the ground, alternately
+lashed and cursed him. I heard an angry voice near me utter the single word “Fools!”
+and saw a <span class="pageNum" id="pb145">[<a href="#pb145">145</a>]</span>stranger brush some men aside and stand directly in front of the horse, which grew
+quiet on the instant. The stranger went nearer, pulled the horse’s head down and laid
+his face against it; and there they stood, man and brute, like carved statues. It
+was as if one were whispering a secret, and the other listening. Then the man said,
+“Come along, boy,” and walked down the square, the horse following at his heels like
+a trained dog.
+</p>
+<p>Watching the scene, my first thought was that the horse recognized a former and kinder
+master; but the man assured me, when I followed him up, that he had never spoken to
+the animal till that moment, and that he could do the same with any refractory horse
+he had ever met. “Try it with that one,” I said promptly, pointing to a nervous horse
+that, feeling the excitement of the recent affair, was jerking and frothing at his
+hitch-rope. The man smiled his acceptance of the challenge, stepped in front of the
+horse, and looked at him steadily. What he thought or willed, what feeling or impulse
+he sent out, I know not; but certainly some silent communication passed, which the
+horse recognized by forward-pointing ears and a low whinny of pleasure. Then the man
+unsnapped the rope from the bridle ring, turned away without a word, and the horse
+followed <span class="pageNum" id="pb146">[<a href="#pb146">146</a>]</span>him across the square and back again to the hitching-post.
+</p>
+<p>When I asked how the thing was done, the man answered with entire frankness that he
+did not know. It “just came natural” to him, he said, to understand horses, and he
+had always been able to make them do almost anything he wanted. But he had no remarkable
+power over other animals, so far as I could learn, and was uncommonly shy of dogs,
+even of little dogs, regarding them all alike as worthless or dangerous brutes.
+</p>
+<p>Some of my readers may recall, in this connection, the shabby-genteel old man who
+used to amuse visitors in the public gardens of Paris by playing with the sparrows,
+some twenty-odd years ago. So long as he went his way quietly the birds paid no more
+attention to him than to any other stroller; but the moment he began to chirp some
+wild and joyous excitement spread through the trees. From all sides the sparrows rushed
+to him, alighting on his hat or shoulders, clamoring loudly for the food which they
+seemed to know was in his pockets, but which he would not at first give them. When
+he had a crowd of men and women watching him (for he was vain of his gift, and made
+a small living by passing his hat after an entertainment) he would single out a cock-sparrow
+from the flock and cry, “What! <i>you</i> here again, Bismarck, you <span class="pageNum" id="pb147">[<a href="#pb147">147</a>]</span>scoundrel?” Then he would abuse the cock-sparrow, calling him a barbarian, a Prussian,
+a mannerless intruder who had no business among honorable French sparrows; and finally,
+pretending to grow violently angry, he would chase Bismarck from bench to bench and
+throw his hat at him. And Bismarck would respond by dodging the hat, chirping blithely
+the while, as if it were a good joke, and would fly back to peck at the crust of bread
+which the old man held between his lips or left sticking out of his pocket.
+</p>
+<p>One might have understood this as a mere training trick if Bismarck were always the
+same; but he was any cock-sparrow that the man chanced to pick out of a flock. After
+playing with the birds till they wearied of it, he would feed them, pass the hat,
+and stroll away to repeat his performance with another flock in another part of the
+gardens. That these wary and suspicious birds, far more distrustful of man than the
+sparrows of the wilderness, understood his mental attitude rather than his word or
+action; that he could make them feel his kindliness, his <i>camaraderie</i>, his call to come and play, even while he pretended to chase them,—this was the impression
+of at least one visitor who watched him again and again at his original entertainment.
+</p>
+<p>Some kind of communication must have passed <span class="pageNum" id="pb148">[<a href="#pb148">148</a>]</span>silently between the actor and one of his audience; for presently, though I never
+spoke to the old man, but only watched him keenly, he picked me out for personal attention.
+Whereupon I cultivated his acquaintance, invited him to dine and fed him like a duke,
+and thought I had gained his confidence by taking him to see a big wolf of mine that
+might well have puzzled any student of birds or beasts. The wolf was one of a wild
+pack that had recently arrived at the zoo from Siberia, where they had been caught
+in a pit and shipped away with all their savagery in them. Through some freak of nature
+this one wolf had attached himself to me, like a lost dog; by some marvelously subtle
+perception he would recognize my coming at a distance, even in a holiday crowd, and
+would thrust his grim muzzle against the bars of his cage to howl or roar till I came
+and stretched out a hand to him, though he was as wild and “slinky” as the rest of
+the pack to everybody else, even to the keeper who fed him. That interested the sparrow-tamer,
+of course; but he was silent or too garrulous whenever I approached the thing I wanted
+to know. He would not tell me how he won the birds, but made a mystery and hocus-pocus
+of the natural gift by which he earned a precarious living.
+</p>
+<p>The same “mystery” cropped out later, amid <span class="pageNum" id="pb149">[<a href="#pb149">149</a>]</span>very different scenes, in the interior of Newfoundland. Coming down beside a salmon
+river one day, my Indian, a remarkable man with an almost uncanny power of calling
+wild creatures of every kind, pointed to a hole high on the side of a stub, and said,
+“Go, knock-um dere; see if woodpecker at home.” I went and knocked softly, but nothing
+happened. “Knock-um again, knock-um little louder,” said Matty. I knocked again, more
+lustily, and again nothing happened. Then the Indian came and rapped the tree with
+his knuckles, while I stood aside; and instantly a woodpecker that was brooding her
+eggs stuck her head out of the hole and looked down at her visitor inquisitively.
+</p>
+<p>The next day at the same place we repeated the same performance precisely, after our
+morning fishing; and again the interesting thing to me was, not the bird’s instant
+appearance at the Indian’s summons, but the curiously intent way in which she turned
+her head to look down at him. When he showed his craft again and again, at the doors
+of other woodpeckers that were not interested in my knocking, I demanded, “Now, Matty,
+tell me how you do it.”
+</p>
+<p>But Matty only laughed. When we are alone in the woods he has a fine sense of humor,
+though grim enough at other times. “Oh, woodpecker <span class="pageNum" id="pb150">[<a href="#pb150">150</a>]</span>know me; he look down at me,” he said; and that was all I could ever get out of him.
+</p>
+<p>So, though I have seen the gift in operation several times, I have not yet found the
+man who had it and who could or would give me any explanation. There is no doubt in
+my own mind, however, that the negro, the Frenchman, and the Indian, and all others
+who exercise any unusual influence over animals, do so by reason of their subconscious
+power to “talk” or to convey impulses without words, as gregarious wild creatures
+commonly talk among themselves. At least, I can understand much of what I see among
+birds and brutes by assuming that they talk in this fashion.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>Such a power seems mysterious, incredible, in a civilized world of sense and noise;
+but I fancy that every man and woman speaks silently to the brute without being conscious
+of the fact. “If you want to see game, leave your gun at home,” is an accepted saying
+among hunters; but the reason for the excellent admonition has not been forthcoming.
+When you have hunted six days in vain, and then on a quiet Sunday stroll come plump
+upon noble game that seems to have no fear, you are apt to think of the curiosities
+of luck, but even here also are you under the sway of psychological law and order.
+As you go quietly <span class="pageNum" id="pb151">[<a href="#pb151">151</a>]</span>through the woods, projecting your own “aura” of peace or sympathy, it may be, in
+an invisible wave ahead of you, there is nothing disturbing or inharmonious in either
+your thoughts or your actions; and at times the wild animal seems curiously able to
+understand the one as well as the other, just as certain dogs know at first glance
+whether a stranger is friendly or hostile or afraid of them. When you are excited
+or lustful to kill, something of your emotional excitement seems to precede you; it
+passes over many wild birds and beasts, all delicately sensitive, before you come
+within their sense range; and when you draw near enough to see them you often find
+them restless, suspicious, though as yet no tangible warning of danger has floated
+through the still woods. At the first glimpse or smell of you they bound away, your
+action in hiding or creeping making evident the danger which thus far was only vaguely
+felt. But if you approach the same animals gently, without mental excitement of any
+kind, sometimes, indeed, they promptly run away, especially in a much-hunted region;
+but more frequently they meet you with a look of surprise; they move alertly here
+or there to get a better view of you, and show many fascinating signs of curiosity
+before they glide away, looking back as they go.
+</p>
+<p>Such has been the illuminating experience of <span class="pageNum" id="pb152">[<a href="#pb152">152</a>]</span>one man, at least, repeated a hundred times in the wilderness. I have been deep in
+the woods when my food-supply ran low, or was lost in the rapids, or went to feed
+an uninvited bear, and it was then a question of shoot game or go hungry; but the
+shooting was limited by the principle that a wild animal has certain rights which
+a man is bound to respect. I have always held, for example, that a hunter has no excuse
+for trying long shots that are beyond his ordinary skill; that it is unpardonable
+of him to “take a chance” with noble game or to “pump lead” after it, knowing as he
+does that the chances are fifty to one that, if he hits at all, he will merely wound
+the animal and deprive it of that gladness of freedom which is more to it than life.
+So when I have occasionally gone out to kill a buck (a proceeding which I heartily
+dislike) I have sometimes hunted for days before getting within close range of the
+animal I wanted. But when, in the same region and following the same trails, I have
+entered the big woods with no other object than to enjoy their stillness, their fragrance,
+their benediction, it is seldom that I do not find plenty of deer, or that I cannot
+get as near as I please to any one of them. More than once in the woods I have touched
+a wild deer with my hand (as recorded in another chapter) and many times I have had
+them within reach of my fishing-rod.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb153">[<a href="#pb153">153</a>]</span></p>
+<p>It is even so with bear, moose, caribou and other creatures—your best “shots” come
+when you are not expecting them, and it is not chance, but psychological law, which
+determines that you shall see most game when you leave your gun at home. A hunter
+must be dull indeed not to have discovered that the animal he approaches peaceably,
+trying to make his eyes or his heart say friendly things, is a very different animal
+from the one he stalks with muscles tense and eyes hard and death in the curl of his
+trigger finger.
+</p>
+<p>I once met an English hunter, a forest officer in India, who told me that for the
+first year of his stay in the jungle he was “crazy” to kill a tiger. He dreamed of
+the creatures by night; he hunted them at every opportunity and in every known fashion
+by day; he never went abroad on forest business without a ready rifle; and in all
+that time he had just one glimpse of a running tiger. One day he was led far from
+his camp by a new bird, and as he watched it in a little opening, unarmed and happy
+in his discovery, a tiger lifted its huge head from the grass, not twenty steps away.
+The brute looked at him steadily for a few moments, then moved quietly aside, stopped
+for another look, and leaped for cover.
+</p>
+<p>That put a new idea into the man’s head, and the idea was emphasized by the fact that
+the unarmed <span class="pageNum" id="pb154">[<a href="#pb154">154</a>]</span>natives, who had no desire to meet a tiger, were frequently seeing the brutes in regions
+where he hunted for them in vain. As an experiment he left his rifle at home for a
+few months; he practised slipping quietly through the jungle without physical or mental
+excitement, as the natives go, and presently he, too, began to meet tigers. In one
+district he came close to four in as many months, and every one acted in the same
+half-astonished, half-inquisitive way. Then, thinking he understood his game, he began
+to carry his rifle again, and had what he called excellent luck. The beautiful tiger
+skins he showed me were a proof of it.
+</p>
+<p>To me this man was a rare curiosity, being the only Indian or African hunter I ever
+met who went into the jungle alone, man fashion, and who did not depend on unarmed
+natives or beaters or trackers for finding his game. His excellent “luck” was, as
+I judge, simply a realization of the fact that human excitement may carry far in the
+still woods, and be quite as disturbing, as the man-scent or the report of a rifle.
+</p>
+<p>Does all this sound strange or incredible to you, like a chapter from a dream-book?
+However it may sound, it is the crystallized conviction resulting from years of intimate
+observation of wild beasts in their native woods; and if you consider <span class="pageNum" id="pb155">[<a href="#pb155">155</a>]</span>it a moment without prejudice, it may appear more natural or familiar, like a chapter
+from life. If the man who sits opposite you can send his good or evil will across
+a room, so that you feel his quality without words, or if he can so express himself
+silently when he enters your gate that certain dogs instantly take his measure and
+welcome or bite him, it is not at all improbable that the same man can project the
+same feelings when he goes afield, or that sensitive wild creatures can understand
+or “feel him out” at a considerable distance.
+</p>
+<p>To weigh that probability fairly you must first get rid of your ancient hunting lore.
+Hunters are like the Medes and Persians in that they have laws which alter not; and
+I suppose if you met ancient Nimrod in the flesh, his admonition would be, “Keep to
+leeward and stalk carefully, breaking no twig, for your game will run away if it winds
+or hears you.” That is the first rule I learned for big-game hunting, and it is founded
+on fact. But there are two other facts I have observed these many years, which Nimrod
+will never mention: the first, that when you are keenly hunting, it often happens
+that game breaks away in alarm <i>before</i> it winds or sees or hears you; and the second, that when you are not hunting, but
+peaceably roving the woods, going carelessly and paying no attention to the wind,
+you often come very close <span class="pageNum" id="pb156">[<a href="#pb156">156</a>]</span>to wild game, which stops to watch you curiously <i>after</i> it has seen you and heard your step or voice and sampled your quality in the air.
+These two facts, implying some kind of mental or emotional contact between the natural
+man and the natural brute, are probably not accidental or unrelated, and we are here
+trying to find the natural law or principle of which they are the occasional and imperfect
+expression.
+</p>
+<p>This whole matter of silent communication may appear less strange if we remember that
+most wild creatures are all their lives accustomed to matters which sense-blinded
+mortals find mysterious or incredible. Why a caterpillar, which lives but a few hours
+when all the leaves are green, should make a cocoon of a single leaf and with a thread
+of silk bind that leaf to its stem before he wraps himself up in it, as if he knew
+that every leaf must fall; or why a spider, adrift for the first time on a chip, should
+immediately send out filaments on the air currents and, when one of his filaments
+cleaves to something solid across the water, pull himself and his raft ashore by it;
+or why a young bear, which has never seen a winter, should at the proper time prepare
+a den for his long winter sleep,—a thousand such matters, which are as A B C to natural
+creatures, are to us as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics to an Eskimo. That a sensitive
+animal <span class="pageNum" id="pb157">[<a href="#pb157">157</a>]</span>should know by feeling (that is, by the reception of a silent message) whether an
+approaching animal is in a dangerous or a harmless mood is really no more remarkable
+than that he should know, as he surely does, when it is time for him to migrate or
+to make ready his winter quarters.
+</p>
+<p>This amazing sensitiveness, resulting, I think, from the reception of a wordless message,
+was brought strongly home to me one day as I watched a flock of black mallards, forty
+or fifty of them, resting in the water-grass within a few yards of my hiding-place.
+A large hawk had appeared at intervals, circling over the marshes and occasionally
+over the pond; but, beyond turning an eye upward when he came too near, the ducks
+apparently paid no attention to him. He was their natural enemy; they had paid toll
+of their number to satisfy his hunger; but now, though plainly seen, he was no more
+regarded or feared than a dragon-fly buzzing among the reeds. Presently another hawk
+appeared in the distance, circling above the meadows. As a wider swing brought him
+over the pond a watchful duck uttered a single low <i>quock!</i> On the instant heads came from under wings; a few ducks shot into the open water
+for a look; others sprang aloft without looking, and the whole flock was away in a
+twinkling. I think the hawk did not see or suspect them till they rose in the air,
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb158">[<a href="#pb158">158</a>]</span>for at the sudden commotion he swooped, checked himself when he saw that he was too
+late, and climbed upward where he could view the whole marsh again.
+</p>
+<p>Now these two hawks were of the same species, and to my eyes they were acting very
+much alike. One was hungry, on the lookout for food; the other was circling for his
+own amusement after having fed; and though the eyes of birds are untrustworthy in
+matters of such fine distinction, in some way these ducks instantly knew or felt the
+difference between the mood of one enemy and that of another. Likewise, when I have
+been watching deer in winter, I have seen a doe throw up her head, cry an alarm and
+bound away; and her action became comprehensible a few moments later when a pack of
+hunting wolves broke out of the cover. But I have watched deer when a pack of wolves
+that were not hunting passed by in plain sight, and beyond an occasional lift of the
+head for an alert glance the timid creatures showed no sign of alarm, or even of uneasiness,
+in presence of their terrible enemies.
+</p>
+<p>I say confidently that one wolf pack was hunting and the other not hunting because
+the northern timber-wolf naturally (that is, in a wild state and dealing with wild
+animals) hunts or kills only when he is hungry. I ran the trails of both packs, and
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb159">[<a href="#pb159">159</a>]</span>one showed plainly that the wolves were in search of food; while the other said that
+the brutes were roaming the country idly, lazily; and when I ran the back trail of
+this second pack I found where they had just killed and eaten. The deer were not afraid
+of them because they were for the time quite harmless.
+</p>
+<p>At first I thought that these ducks and deer perceived the mood of their enemies in
+a simple way through the senses; that they could infer from the flight of a hawk or
+the trot of a wolf whether he were peaceable or dangerous; and at times this is probably
+the true explanation of the matter. The eyes of most birds and beasts, strangely dull
+to objects at rest, are instantly attracted to any unusual motion. If the motion be
+quiet, steady, rhythmical, they soon lose interest in it, unless it be accompanied
+by a display of bright color; but if the motion be erratic, or if it appear and disappear,
+as when an approaching animal hides or creeps, they keep sharp watch until they know
+what the motion means or until timidity prompts them to run away. Thus, chickens or
+ducks show alarm when a kite slants up into the air; they lose interest when the kite
+sits in the wind, and become alert again when it begins to dive or swoop. It is noticeable,
+also, that on a windy day all game-birds and animals are uncommonly wild and difficult
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb160">[<a href="#pb160">160</a>]</span>of approach, partly because the constant motion of leaves or grass upsets them, and
+partly (in the case of animals) because their noses are at fault, the air messages
+being constantly broken up and confused. But such a “sensible” explanation, suitable
+as it may be for times or places, no longer satisfies me, and simply because it does
+not explain why on a quiet day game should be unconcerned in presence of one hawk
+or wolf, and take to instant flight on the appearance of another enemy of the same
+species.
+</p>
+<p>It should be noted here that these “fierce” birds and beasts are no more savage in
+killing grouse or deer than the grouse is savage in eating bugs, or the deer in seeking
+mushrooms at the proper season; that they simply seek their natural meat when they
+are hungry, and that they are not bloodthirsty or ferocious or wanton killers. Only
+men, and dogs trained or spoiled by men, are open to that charge. The birds and beasts
+of prey when not hungry (which is a large part of the time, since they feed but once
+a day or sometimes at longer intervals) live as peaceably as one could wish. After
+feeding they instinctively seek to be with their own kind and very rarely attempt
+to molest other creatures. At such times, when they are resting or playing or roving
+the woods, the smaller wood folk pay no more attention to them than to <span class="pageNum" id="pb161">[<a href="#pb161">161</a>]</span>harmless fish-hawks or porcupines.<a class="noteRef" id="xd32e1359src" href="#xd32e1359">1</a> Repeatedly I have watched game-birds or animals when their enemies were in sight,
+and have wondered at their fearlessness. The interesting question is, <span class="corr" id="xd32e1362" title="Source: How">how</span> do they know, as they seemingly do, when the full-fed satisfaction of their enemy
+changes to a dangerous mood? Why, for example, are deer alarmed at the yelp of a she-wolf
+calling her cubs to the trail, and why do they feed confidently in the dusk-filled
+woods, as I have seen them do, when the air shivers and creeps to the clamor of a
+wolf pack baying like unleashed hounds in wild jubilation?
+</p>
+<p>I have no answer to the question, and no explanation except the one suggested by human
+experience: that the hunting animal, like the hunting man, probably sends something
+of his emotional excitement in a wave ahead of him, and that some animals are finely
+sensitive enough to receive this message and to be vaguely alarmed by it.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>The mating of animals, especially the calling of an unseen mate from a great distance,
+brings us <span class="pageNum" id="pb162">[<a href="#pb162">162</a>]</span>face to face with the same problem, and perhaps also the same answer. Sometimes the
+mating call is addressed to the outer ear, as in the drumming of a cock-grouse or
+the whine of a cow-moose; but frequently a mate appears when, so far as we can hear,
+there is no audible cry to call him. How do the butterflies, for example, know when
+or where to seek their other halves? That their meeting is by chance or blunder or
+accident is a theory which hardly endures an hour’s observation. In the early spring
+I take a cocoon from a certain corner of shrubbery and carry it to my house, and there
+keep it till the end softens, when I put it into a box with a screened top and hang
+it out under the trees. Presently a gorgeous moth crawls out of the cocoon; and hardly
+has she begun to wave her wings to dry them when the air over the screen is brilliant
+with dancing wings, the wings of her would-be mates. And the thing is more puzzling
+to me because I have never found a cocoon of that kind in my immediate neighborhood;
+nor have I seen a single <i>cecropia</i> this season until the captive called them.
+</p>
+<p>How they find her so promptly is a problem that I cannot solve. It may be that the
+call is wholly physical or sensible, that some fine dust or aroma is sent forth on
+the air currents, and the sensitive nerves of other moths receive and respond to it;
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb163">[<a href="#pb163">163</a>]</span>but it is still amazing that wind-blown creatures can follow an invisible air-trail
+through what must be to them a constant tempest and whirlwind of air currents, until
+they come unerringly to the one desired spot in a limitless universe. I have shown
+that pretty sight of dancing wings to many audiences, after predicting what would
+happen; and always they saw it with wonder, as if there were magic in it.
+</p>
+<p>The moth mystery may be dissolved by some such purely physical formula; but what physical
+sense will explain the fact that when I turned a modest hen-pheasant loose in the
+spring, in a region where my wide-ranging setter and I never discovered a pheasant,
+she was immediately joined by a gloriously colored mate, and soon there was a hidden
+nest and then young pheasants to watch? Most birds and beasts are questing widely
+in the mating season, and their senses seem to be more keen at this time, or more
+concentrated on a single object. On grounds of what we thoughtlessly call chance,
+therefore, they would be more apt to find mates when they are keenly looking for them;
+but giving them every possible chance in a wide region where the species is almost
+extinct, and then multiplying that chance a hundred times, I still find it hard to
+believe that the meeting of two rare animals is either accidental or the result of
+ordinary <span class="pageNum" id="pb164">[<a href="#pb164">164</a>]</span>sense-perception. Out of several examples that occur to me, here are two which especially
+challenge the attention:
+</p>
+<p>One early spring a she-fox was caught in her den, some five miles from the village
+where I then harbored. She was carefully bagged, carried a few rods to an old wood
+road, placed in a wagon and driven over country highways to the village, where she
+was confined in a roomy pen in a man’s dooryard. A few nights later came a snowfall,
+and in the morning there were the tracks of a male fox heading straight to the vixen
+and making a path round about her pen. She was his mate, presumably, and when we found
+his tracks our first feeling of admiration at his boldness was soon replaced by the
+puzzling question of how he had found her so quickly and so surely. To answer that
+question, if possible, I followed his back trail.
+</p>
+<p>Now the trail of a fox in the wilderness, where he is sometimes hunted by wolves or
+other hungry prowlers, is a bewildering succession of twistings and crisscrosses;
+in a settled region, where his natural enemies are extinct, his trail is bolder, more
+straightforward, easier to read; and in either case you can quickly tell by the “signs”
+whether your fox is male or female, whether hunting or roaming, or hungry or satisfied.
+Also you <span class="pageNum" id="pb165">[<a href="#pb165">165</a>]</span>can tell whether he is just “projeckin’ around,” as Uncle Remus says, or whether his
+mind is set on going somewhere. In the latter event he almost invariably follows runways,
+or fox roads, which are as well known to him as are footpaths and stream-crossings
+to a country lad. But the trail of this particular fox was different from any other
+that I ever followed. That he was a male and was “going somewhere” was evident enough;
+but he was not following runways or paying any attention to them. He left no signs
+at places where any ordinary dog-fox would surely have left them, and he was stopping
+to listen or to ward himself at uncommonly frequent intervals. So, running it backward,
+I read the story of his journey mile after mile, till the oncoming trail changed to
+the devious, rambling trot of a questing fox; and beyond that I had no interest in
+it.
+</p>
+<p>The place where the fox seemed to have found his bearings, or where he stopped his
+rambling to head straight for his mate, was some four miles distant from the captive
+in a bee-line. The course he took was entirely different from that taken by the man
+who brought the vixen home, thus excluding the theory that he followed the trail by
+scent; and the latter part of his way led through the outskirts of a village, where
+the track of a fox had not been seen for many years. From the distant <span class="pageNum" id="pb166">[<a href="#pb166">166</a>]</span>hills he had come down through sheltering woods at a stealthy trot; across open pastures
+on the jump; over a bridge and along a highway, where he traveled behind a friendly
+stone wall; then very cautiously through lanes and garden fringes, where the scent
+of men and dogs met him at every turn; turning aside here for a difficulty or there
+for a danger, but holding his direction as true as if he followed a compass, till
+he came at last with delicate steps to where his mate was silently calling him. For
+except on the assumption that she called him, and with a cry that was soundless, I
+know not how to explain the fact that he found her in a place where neither he nor
+she had ever been before.
+</p>
+<p>It is possible, you may reason, that this was not his first visit; that unknown to
+us, venturing among his human and canine enemies, he had by a lucky chance stumbled
+upon his mate on an evening when the bare ground did not betray his secret to our
+eyes; and that for his next visit he had cunningly laid out a different trail through
+manifold dangers. It was the latter trail, made without doubt or question of what
+lay at the end of it, which I had followed in the telltale snow.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p166width" id="p166"><img src="images/p166.jpg" alt="The course he took was entirely different from that taken by the man who brought the vixen home." width="496" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>The course he took was entirely different from that taken by the man who brought the
+vixen home.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb166a">[<a href="#pb166a">166</a>]</span></p>
+<p>That is a good armchair argument, but a very doubtful explanation of the fox action,
+since it calls for more reasoning power than we commonly find <span class="pageNum" id="pb167">[<a href="#pb167">167</a>]</span>in a brute. Remember that this male fox was far away on his own affairs when his mate
+was captured, and he had no means of knowing where she had gone: he simply missed
+her from her accustomed haunts, and sought till he found her. Remember also that a
+male fox is never allowed to come near his mate’s den; that when she is heavy with
+young, as this vixen was when caught, he may join her of an evening and hunt for her,
+or bring her food that he has killed, but always, I think, at a distance from the
+place where she intends to bring forth her cubs. That the male, after missing his
+mate and yapping for her in vain through the woods, should at last seek her at the
+forbidden den, and there find the scent of men and conclude that they had taken her
+away; that he should follow the scent of a wagon-wheel over five miles of country
+roads, or else explore all the neighboring villages till he found what he sought;
+that he should then lay out a different trail, more secret and more reasonably safe,
+for his second visit,—all this is to me more ingenious, more unnatural and more incredible
+than that his mate should silently call him, as his mother had probably many times
+called him from the den when he was a cub, and that he should feel and answer her
+summons.
+</p>
+<p>Such reasoning is purely speculative, but there <span class="pageNum" id="pb168">[<a href="#pb168">168</a>]</span>are certain facts which we must keep in mind if we are to explain the matter. The
+first, a general fact which is open to observation, is that it is fox nature at certain
+seasons to come to a captive; for what reason or with what self-forgetful motive it
+would be hard to say. I have known mother foxes and mother wolves to come where their
+cubs were imprisoned by men. I have heard a straight record of one male wolf that
+appeared at a ranch the second night after his wounded mate was captured by the ranchman.
+And I have seen a male fox come to the rescue of a female when she was driven by dogs
+and too heavy with young to make a long run, and wait beside her trail till the dogs
+appeared, and then lead them off after him while she made her escape. The second fact,
+which may imply some power of silent communication, is that when snow fell about the
+pen of this captive fox, a few nights after she was taken, there were the tracks to
+show that her mate already knew where she was. That he found and came to her in the
+midst of his enemies may be quite as significant as <i>how</i> he found her, by way of giving a new direction or interest to our skin-and-bones
+study of natural history.
+</p>
+<p>In this first example the fox was perhaps moved by the mating impulse, which sharpened
+his wit and encouraged his will; but at times a wild creature <span class="pageNum" id="pb169">[<a href="#pb169">169</a>]</span>may seek and find his mate when no such “call of the blood” urges him, when he comes
+with his life in his hand in response to some finer or nobler motive, something perhaps
+akin to loyalty, which is the sum of all virtues. Witness the following:
+</p>
+<p>A friend of mine was hunting one October day when his shot wing-tipped a quail, apparently
+the old female of the flock, which his dog caught and brought to him almost uninjured.
+What to do was the next question. It is easy, because thoughtless, to cut down a bird
+in swift flight; but when the little thing nestles down in your hand or tries to hide
+under your fingers; when you can feel its rapid heart-beat, and its eyes are big and
+wondrous bright,—well, then some hunters bite the head, and some wring the neck, and
+some would for the moment as lief be shot as to do either. So to avoid the difficulty
+my friend put the quail carefully away in a pocket of his hunting-coat, and brought
+her home with some vague idea of taming her, and some dream of trapping a mate in
+the spring and perhaps raising some little bob-whites of his own. At night he put
+the captive into a coop just inside the barn window, which was open wide enough to
+admit air but not a prowling cat; for he was already beginning to learn that a quail
+is a most lovable little pet, and <span class="pageNum" id="pb170">[<a href="#pb170">170</a>]</span>he was bound that she should not again be hurt or frightened.
+</p>
+<p>Before sunrise next morning he heard low, eager whistlings in the yard; and there
+was another quail, a male bob-white, where never one was seen before nor since. He
+was perched warily on the window-sill of the barn, looking in at his captive mate,
+telling her in the softest of quail tones (for there were enemies all about) that
+he had found her and was glad; while from within the barn came a soft piping and gurgling
+which seemed to speak welcome and reassurance. The opening of a door frightened him;
+he buzzed away to the orchard, and presently from an apple-tree came the exquisite
+<i>quoi-lee! quoi-lee!</i> the assembly-call of the bob-white family.
+</p>
+<p>The first quail had been caught miles away from the man’s house; there were no other
+birds of her own kind within hearing distance, so far as my friend and his dog ever
+discovered, and it was not the mating-time, when quail are questing widely. By a process
+of elimination, therefore, one reaches the conclusion that the male bird was, in all
+probability, the father of the flock over which the captive presided; that he had
+helped to raise the young birds, as quail commonly do; that he had stood by his family
+all summer in loyal bob-white fashion, and that he went out to seek <span class="pageNum" id="pb171">[<a href="#pb171">171</a>]</span>his vanished mate when she failed to answer his calling.
+</p>
+<p>All that seems clear enough, and in perfect accord with quail habits; but when you
+ask, “How did he find her?” there is no answer except the meaningless word “chance”
+or a frank admission of our original premise: that wild birds and beasts all exercise
+a measure of that mysterious telepathic power which reappears now and then in some
+sensitive man or woman. It may be for the wood folk that “There is no speech nor language:
+their voice is not heard,” as the Psalmist wrote of the communing day and night; but
+they certainly communicate in some way, and the longer one studies them the more does
+it appear that part of their “talk” is of a finer character than that which our ears
+can hear.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p171width"><img src="images/p171.png" alt="Bird." width="178" height="266"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb173">[<a href="#pb173">173</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnotes">
+<hr class="fnsep">
+<div class="footnote-body">
+<div class="fndiv" id="xd32e1359">
+<p class="footnote"><span class="fnlabel"><a class="noteRef" href="#xd32e1359src">1</a></span> In parts of the West, I am told, wolves often kill more than they need. Formerly they
+fed on the abundant game and were wholly natural animals; but their habits have changed
+with a changed environment. When the game was destroyed by settlers or hunters the
+wolves began to feed on domestic animals; and the descendants of these wolves, which
+killed right and left in a crowding, excited herd of sheep or cattle, are now said
+to kill deer wantonly when they have the chance. I cannot personally verify the saying,
+and know not whether it rests on exceptional or typical observation. In the North,
+where there are no domestic animals, I have rarely known a timber-wolf to kill after
+his hunger was satisfied.&nbsp;<a class="fnarrow" href="#xd32e1359src" title="Return to note 1 in text.">↑</a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div0 part">
+<h2 class="main">How to Know the Wood Folk</h2>
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure p173width"><img src="images/p173.png" alt="Bobcat with text “How to Know the Wood Folk.”" width="379" height="414"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb175">[<a href="#pb175">175</a>]</span></p>
+<div id="ch7" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e245">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p175.png" alt="VII" width="554" height="300"></div>
+<h2 class="label">VII</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>On Getting Acquainted</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">To know birds and beasts may be a greater or a lesser triumph than to know ornithology
+or zoölogy. That is a question of taste or temperament, the only certainty being that
+the two classes of subjects are altogether different. The latter deals with external
+matters, with form, classification, generalities. Its materials are books, specimens,
+museums, one as dead or desiccate as another; and because it is limited and exact,
+you can memorize its outlines in a few days, or become in a few years an authority
+in the science.
+</p>
+<p>The former subject, of birds and beasts, deals with an endless and fascinating mystery.
+Its materials are living and joyous individuals, among <span class="pageNum" id="pb176">[<a href="#pb176">176</a>]</span>whom are no classes or species, concerning whom there can be no “authority”; and when,
+after a lifetime of study, you have made a small beginning of knowledge, you find
+that, like All Gaul of misty memory, it may be divided into three parts.
+</p>
+<p>One part is observation, which is a simple matter of the eye. Another is sympathy,
+which belongs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild creatures, as with civilized
+folk, one learns to appreciate De Quincey’s rule of criticism, “Not to sympathize
+is not to understand.” A third part, more rare and variable, may come from that penetrating
+but indescribable quality which we call a gift. A few men have it; the animals instinctively
+trust them, and they understand animals without knowing how they understand. The rest,
+lacking it, must struggle against a handicap to learn, substituting the slow wisdom
+of experience for the quick insight of the gift. It is for the latter chiefly that
+I write these wood notes.
+</p>
+<p>One word more by way of preface, to express the conviction that you can learn nothing
+worth knowing about birds or beasts so long as you seek them with a gun in your hand.
+On that road you shall find only common dust, and at the end of it a valley of dry
+bones. Whether you carry the gun frankly for sport, or delude yourself with the notion
+that you can add to natural history by collecting <span class="pageNum" id="pb177">[<a href="#pb177">177</a>]</span>more skins or skulls, you have unconsciously placed destruction above fulfilment,
+stark death above the beautiful mystery of life. So must you estrange both the animal
+and yourself, making it impossible for you to meet on any common ground of understanding.
+And now for our lessons:
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>If I were to formulate rules for a subject which can never be learned by the book,
+I might say that there are three things you should know, and another you must do,
+if you expect to gain any intimate knowledge of the wood folk, or even to approach
+them near enough for fair and leisurely observation.
+</p>
+<p>The first thing to know is that natural creatures, though instinctively shy or timid,
+are not wildly governed by fears and terrors, as we have been misinformed from our
+youth up. The “reign of terror” is another of those pet scientific delusions, like
+the “struggle for existence,” for which there is no basis in nature. Fear in any true
+sense of the word is an exclusively human possession, or affliction; it is a physical
+and moral poison, as artificial as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue of being
+natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything remotely resembling our fear, a
+state of mind arising from a highly developed imagination which enables us to picture
+events before they happen, <span class="pageNum" id="pb178">[<a href="#pb178">178</a>]</span>is ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an egg. The natural timidity of all
+wild creatures is a protective and wholesome instinct, radically different from the
+fear which makes cowards of men who have learned to trace causes and to anticipate
+consequences.
+</p>
+<p>So much for the mental analysis; and your eyes emphasize the same conclusion when
+you look frankly upon the natural world. The very attitude or visible expression of
+birds or beasts when you meet them in their native woods, feeding, playing, resting,
+seeking their mates, or roving freely with their little ones (all pleasurable matters,
+constituting nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is enough in itself to refute
+the absurd notion of a general reign of terror in nature. If you are wise, therefore,
+you will get rid of that prejudice, or at least hold it in abeyance till the animals
+themselves teach you how senseless it is. To go out obsessed with the notion of fear
+is to blind your eyes to the great comedy of the woods.
+</p>
+<p>The second thing to know, and to remember when you go forth to see, is that sensitive
+creatures dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when they find a pair of eyes intently
+fixed upon them. You yourself retain something of this ancient animal inheritance,
+it seems, since there is nothing which more surely excites alarm if you are timid,
+or <span class="pageNum" id="pb179">[<a href="#pb179">179</a>]</span>challenge if you are well balanced, or anger if you have a fighting spirit, than to
+have a stranger watching your every move while you go about your lawful affairs. The
+fact that you cannot word a reason for your alarm or challenge or anger makes you
+all the more certain that you have an unanswerable reason; which is your inborn right
+to be let alone.
+</p>
+<p>This natural and inalienable right (which society curbs for its own protection, and
+reform societies trample on for their peculiar pleasure) may help you to understand
+why the animal becomes alarmed when he finds you watching him closely. He desires
+above all things else, above his dinner even, to be let alone; and your eye may as
+surely disturb his peace, his self-possession, his sense of security, as any gun you
+may shoot at him or any fire you may kindle in his fragrant domain.
+</p>
+<p>You have but to think a moment in order to understand why even your look may be too
+disturbing. When a beast of prey sees a buck that he wants to catch, what is his invariable
+mode of procedure? First he hides, then he creeps or skulks or waits, all the while
+keeping his eyes fastened upon his victim, watching every move with fierce intensity
+till the moment comes to spring. It follows, naturally enough, that when the same
+beast of prey finds other eyes fixed upon <span class="pageNum" id="pb180">[<a href="#pb180">180</a>]</span>himself, he knows well what the look means, that a rush will swiftly follow; and he
+anticipates the rush by taking to his heels. Or the buck, having once escaped the
+charge of a hunting beast, will remember his experience the next time he finds himself
+an object of scrutiny, and will flee from it as from any other discomfort.
+</p>
+<p>Whether this action is the result of instinctive or deductive knowledge is here of
+no consequence: let the psychologists pick a bone over it. Since we have in our heads
+a strong aversion to being observed too closely, we are probably facing an instinct,
+which is stronger in the brute than in the man; but it is the fact, not the explanation
+thereof, which is important. The simple fact is, that wild birds and beasts will not
+endure watching; and you begin to sympathize with their notion when you mark the eyes
+of a stalking cat, with their terrible fire just before she springs. There is always
+more or less of that fire in a watchful eye; you may see it glow or blaze under a
+man’s narrowed lids before he takes quick action; and it is the kindling of that dangerous
+light which a sensitive creature expects and avoids when he finds you watching him.
+</p>
+<p>Did you ever follow an old cock-partridge in the woods with intent to kill him? If
+so, you have a living picture of the truth I have explained <span class="pageNum" id="pb181">[<a href="#pb181">181</a>]</span>theoretically. Near our towns the partridge (ruffed grouse) is very wild, taking wing
+at your approach; but in the deep woods he is almost fearless. Even when you stumble
+into a flock of the birds, frightening them out of their calm, they are apt to flit
+into the trees and remain absolutely motionless. They are then hard to find, so well
+do they blend with their background; and if they are young birds, they will hold still
+after you discover them. Since they were helpless chicks they have trusted to quietness
+to conceal them; it serves them very well, much better than running away from stronger
+enemies; and the habit is strong upon them, as upon young ducks and other game-birds
+before they have learned to trust their wings. But when you stumble upon an old cock-grouse
+you meet a bird that has added experience to instinct, and that knows when to move
+as well as when to sit still. He dodges out of sight as you raise your rifle; as you
+follow him he bursts away on whirring wings and slants up into a tree in a distant
+part of the wood. Marking where he lights, you try to find him, cat-footing around
+his perch, peering into every tree-top, putting a “crik” in the back of your neck.
+For a half-hour, it may be, you search for him in vain; suddenly there he is, and—<i>b’r-r-r-r!</i> he is gone. The odd thing is that he sits still so long as you cannot find him; not
+a <span class="pageNum" id="pb182">[<a href="#pb182">182</a>]</span>feather stirs or a foot shifts or an eyelid blinks even when your glance roves blindly
+over him; you may give him up and go away, leaving him motionless; but the instant
+you see him he seems to know it, and in that instant he is off. This is not a single
+or an accidental but a typical experience; any woodsman who has hunted ruffed grouse
+with a rifle will smile as he tells you, “That’s true; but I can’t explain it.”
+</p>
+<p>A third bit of woods lore, of which we shall presently make good use, is that natural
+birds and animals have a lively interest in every new or strange thing they meet.
+Far from being occupied in a constant struggle for existence, as the books misinform
+us, their lives are full of leisure; they have plentiful hours for rest or play or
+roving, and in these idle times they get most of their fun out of life by indulging
+their curiosity. I fancy that in this respect, also, most people are still natural
+creatures, seeing that men or women in a crowd are as easily set to stretching their
+necks as any flock of ducks or band of caribou.
+</p>
+<p>So strong is the animal’s inquisitive instinct (for it surely is an instinct, the
+basis of all education, and without it we should be fools, learning nothing) that
+he will readily give over his play or even his feeding to investigate any new thing
+which catches his attention. I speak now not of <span class="pageNum" id="pb183">[<a href="#pb183">183</a>]</span>fearsome things, which may properly alarm the wood folk, but of pretty or harmless
+or attractive things, such as the repeated flash of a looking-glass or the rhythmic
+swing of a handkerchief or a whistled tune, which commonly bring wild creatures nearer
+with forward-set ears and eyes with questions in them. In a word, so far as I have
+observed birds and beasts, their first or natural attitude toward every new object,
+unless it be raising fearful smells or moving toward them with hostile intent, is
+invariably one of curiosity rather than of fear.
+</p>
+<p>One proof of this universal trait, to me, is that when I approach wild animals carelessly
+they often run away; but of the hundreds that have approached me when I was quiet
+in the woods, every one without exception showed plainly by his action that he was
+keen to find out who or what I might be. Young animals are more inquisitive than old,
+having everything to learn, and they are easily attracted; but age cannot stale the
+wonder of the world for them, and I have never chanced to meet an old doe, no, nor
+a tough old bull moose, that did not come near to question me if the chance were given.
+Of the larger wood folk Mooween the bear is perhaps the least inquisitive; yet once
+an old bear came so close to me, his eyes a question and his nose an <span class="pageNum" id="pb184">[<a href="#pb184">184</a>]</span>exclamation point, that I could have touched him before his curiosity was satisfied;
+and several times, when I have been watching the berry-fields, a bear and her cubs
+have noticed some slight motion of mine and have left their feast of blueberries to
+approach rather too near for my comfort. At close quarters an old she-bear is a little
+uncertain. Commonly she runs away in sudden panic; but should you get between her
+and her cub, and the piggish little fellow squeal out as if frightened or hurt, she
+may fly into a fury and become dangerous to a man unarmed.
+</p>
+<p>The obvious thing to do, in view of what has been learned, is to hold physically and
+mentally still when you meet a wild animal, and so take advantage of his curiosity.
+That is very easy when he happens to find you at rest, for then he is bound to find
+out something about you before he goes; but even when he catches you afoot you may
+still have a fair chance if you stop in your tracks and move no muscle while he is
+looking. Remember that so long as you are motionless you puzzle him; that you should
+advance only when his head is turned away, and that you should never move directly
+at any animal, but to one side, as if you would give him plenty of room in passing.
+If you must change your position or attitude while he is looking, move gently and
+very slowly, avoiding <span class="pageNum" id="pb185">[<a href="#pb185">185</a>]</span>every appearance of haste or nervousness. If he vanishes after one keen look, be sure
+he is a veteran that has seen men before, and bide still where you are. The chances
+are ten to one that no sooner does he think himself hidden than he will turn to have
+another look at you. It is always in your favor, since you have the better eyes, that
+an animal has the habit of concealment, and so long as you pretend not to see him
+he is very apt to think himself unseen.
+</p>
+<p>Such a method applies particularly well to all members of the deer family, with their
+insatiable curiosity; but it serves almost as well with beasts of prey, which may
+be so surprised by meeting a motionless man that they will often “point” him in a
+way to suggest a setter pointing a woodcock. We think of the fox, for example, as
+the most cunning of animals; like the dolls’ dressmaker in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, he seems to be saying, “Oh, I know your tricks and your manners”; yet on a good
+tracking-snow I have trailed many foxes to their day-beds, and have found that with
+few exceptions they act in the same half-puzzled, half-inquisitive way. And this is
+the fashion of it:
+</p>
+<p>Looking far ahead on the dainty trail you suddenly catch a glimpse of orange color,
+very warm against the cold whiteness of the snow, which tells you where Eleemos the
+sly one, as Simmo calls <span class="pageNum" id="pb186">[<a href="#pb186">186</a>]</span>him, is curled on a warm rock or stump with the winter sunshine fair upon him. Then
+you must leave the trail, as if you were not following it, and advance on noiseless
+feet till the fox raises his head, when you must “freeze” in your tracks. If he is
+a tramp fox (that is, one which has come hunting here out of his own territory) or
+a veteran that has already seen too much of men and their devices, he will dodge out
+of sight and be seen no more; but if he is an ordinary young fox, especially a cub
+weathering his first winter, he will almost certainly investigate that odd motionless
+object which was not there when he went to sleep. After “pointing” you a moment he
+slips into the nearest cover, not turning his head in your direction, but watching
+you keenly out of the corners of his yellow eyes. When he thinks himself hidden from
+your sight he circles to get your wind; and on this side or that you will have two
+or three good glimpses of him before he floats away—or seems to, so lightly does he
+run—to hunt up another day-bed. Your last view of him shows a slyly inquisitive little
+beast, perfectly self-possessed; but as he disappears you notice a nervous, quivering,
+fluttering motion of his great brush, which gives him away as a tail betrays a dog,
+and which says that Eleemos is greatly excited or puzzled over something.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb187">[<a href="#pb187">187</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Better than roaming noisily through the woods in search of game is to sit still and
+let the game come to you—an arrangement which puts you at your ease, and at the same
+time encourages the animal to indulge his curiosity without alarm. You may not see
+so many birds or beasts in this way, but some of them you shall see much more intimately;
+and a single inquisitive jay may teach you more of nature than all the bird books
+in the world, as I have learned more of Latin humanity from Angelo, who polishes my
+shoes, than from Gibbon’s <i>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>. Very often, if you hold perfectly still, a wild animal will pass down the runway
+close at hand without even seeing you, and you must draw his attention by a chirp
+or a slight motion. Then, when he whirls upon you in astonishment, his eyes saying
+that he was never so surprised in his life, observe him casually as it were, veiling
+your interest and never staring at him as if he were a wild or strange beast, but
+greeting him rather as one you have long known.
+</p>
+<p>At such a moment quietness is the best medicine—quietness and friendly eyes. If the
+animal wavers, a low song or a whistled tune may or may not be helpful; it depends
+entirely on the tune. You are to keep physically quiet, because any sudden motion
+will alarm the sensitive creature, <span class="pageNum" id="pb188">[<a href="#pb188">188</a>]</span>so near is he to the unknown; and mentally quiet, because excitement is as contagious
+as fear or measles, or any other disease of mind or body. When I am alone in the woods
+wild animals are rarely hard to approach, and when I am sitting quietly by a runway
+they show no fear of me whatever, drawing near with questioning eyes or moving away
+reluctantly; but when I take another with me, especially one who grows excited in
+the presence of big game, the same animals appear suspicious, uneasy, and end by bolting
+away as if we had frightened them.
+</p>
+<p>One day there came to my camp a friend who was eager to see a deer at close range,
+but who was doubtful of my assurance that animals could neither see nor smell him
+if he knew how to hold still. When I promised him a deer at ten feet he jumped for
+his camera, saying that in such an incredible event he would get what he had always
+wanted, a picture of the graceful creature against a background of his native woods,
+in soft light and shadow instead of the glaring black-and-white of a flashlight. At
+that disturbing proposition all his doubts moved into me, who have always found camera
+folk a fidgety folk. What with their fussing and focusing and everlasting uneasiness
+over distance or time or shutter, or something else which is never right and ready,
+they are sure to bedevil <span class="pageNum" id="pb189">[<a href="#pb189">189</a>]</span>any wild creature before he comes within speaking distance; so I took my friend and
+his camera along without faith, hoping for the best.
+</p>
+<p>Our stand was a hardwood ridge where deer often passed on their way to the lake, and
+we had been sitting there hardly an hour when I saw a young spikebuck coming down
+the runway. The next moment there was a gasping “Oh, there’s a deer!” from the man
+who had been warned to keep mentally still. Then began the inevitable tinkering with
+the camera, which had been thrice prepared and was still as unready as all its kind.
+More than once I had sat in that precise spot while deer passed at a distance of three
+or four yards without noticing me; but now the little buck caught an uneasy motion
+and halted with head high and eyes flashing. If ever there was a chance for a wonderful
+picture, he offered it; but he did not like the focusing, or whatever it was, and
+after endless delay the camera clicked on a white flag bobbing among the shadows,
+where it looked in the negative like a smear of sunlight.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>The camera reminds me of another way of approaching deer, a way often followed by
+summer campers; namely, by chasing the swimming animal in a canoe. I have but one
+word to say of such a method, and that is, Don’t! When a deer is <span class="pageNum" id="pb190">[<a href="#pb190">190</a>]</span>crossing broad water you can get as close to him as you will; you can take a grip
+on him and let him tow your canoe, as thoughtless people sometimes do, encouraged
+by their guides; but I suggest that it would be much better to shoot the creature
+and have done with it.
+</p>
+<p>A deer’s powers are very delicately balanced; he is nervous, high strung, easily upset.
+Even on land, where he can distance you in a moment, he begins to worry if he finds
+you holding steadily to his trail; and I have known a young deer to become so flustered
+after he had been jumped and followed a few times that he began to act in most erratic
+fashion, and was very easily approached. When you chase him in the water, and he finds
+that he cannot get away from you, he may give up and drown, as a rabbit submits without
+a struggle when a weasel rises in front of him; but a vigorous deer is more apt to
+become highly excited, to struggle wildly, to waste ten times as much energy as would
+keep him afloat, to jump his heart action at a dangerous rate; and then a very little
+more will finish him as surely as a bullet in the brain.
+</p>
+<p>Twice have I seen deer thus killed by thoughtless campers, the last victim being a
+splendid buck full grown. Two men saw him swimming an arm of Moosehead Lake, and launched
+a canoe with no unkinder purpose than to turn him back to shore, <span class="pageNum" id="pb191">[<a href="#pb191">191</a>]</span>so that a party of sportsmen there might get a picture of him. The buck labored mightily;
+but the paddles were swift, and wherever he turned the danger appeared close in front
+of him. Suddenly he rose in the water, pawing the air, and heaved over on his side.
+When the canoe reached him he was dead; and the surprising thing is that dissection
+revealed no ruptured blood-vessel nor any other visible cause of his death. It was
+probably a matter of heart paralysis. Such an ending was unusual, I know; but undoubtedly
+many of these overwrought animals reach shore exhausted, spent to the limit, and lie
+down in the first good cover, never to rise again.
+</p>
+<p>Moose and caribou are stronger swimmers than deer, and of tougher fiber; but it is
+still dangerous, I think, to chase them in the water. Once I saw a canoe following
+close behind a cow and a calf moose, the canoeists yelling wildly to hurry up the
+pace. Had they thought to look once into the eyes of the struggling brutes, they might
+have learned something which they ought to know. As the calf lagged farther and farther
+behind, the mother turned to come between him and the canoe, and remained there trying
+to urge and push the little fellow along. So they reached shallow water at last, found
+their footing, and plunged into the cover. The canoe turned away, and no doubt the
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb192">[<a href="#pb192">192</a>]</span>incident was soon forgotten. I never saw the canoemen again, but I saw one of the
+moose. A few days later, in passing through the woods on that side of the lake, I
+found the calf stretched out dead where he had fallen, not fifty yards from the water’s
+edge.
+</p>
+<p>Perhaps another “don’t” should here be memorized for the happy occasion when you find
+a fawn or a little cub in the woods, and are moved most kindly to pet him. If the
+mother is half-tame, or has lived near a clearing long enough to lose distrust of
+the man-scent, it may do no harm to treat her fawn or cub as you would a puppy; but
+to handle any wild little creature is to do him an injury. Until a fawn is strong
+enough to travel the rough country in which he was born, the doe often leaves him
+hidden in the woods, where he lies so close and still that you may pass without seeing
+him. Once you discover him, however, and he knows that he is seen, his beautiful eyes
+begin to question you with a great wonder. He has no fear of you whatever (this while
+he is very young, or before he begins to follow his mother); he will sometimes follow
+you when you go away, and he is such a lovable creature, so innocent and so appealing,
+that it is hard to keep your hands from him. Let him sniff your palm if he will, or
+lick it with his rough tongue for the faint taste of salt; <span class="pageNum" id="pb193">[<a href="#pb193">193</a>]</span>but as you value his life don’t pet him or leave the scent of you on his delicate
+skin. A wild mother knows her own by the sense of smell chiefly; if she finds the
+startling man-scent where she expected a familiar odor, she becomes instantly alarmed,
+and then the little one is a stranger to her or a source of violent anger.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p192width" id="p192"><img src="images/p192.jpg" alt="So innocent and so appealing that it is hard to keep your hands from him." width="494" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>So innocent and so appealing that it is hard to keep your hands from him.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb193a">[<a href="#pb193a">193</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Once, before I learned better than to handle any helpless cub, I saw a doe drive her
+own fawn roughly away from her, out of my sight and hearing. I had petted the fawn
+a little (a very little, I am glad to remember) and looked with wonder on the mother’s
+anger, not understanding it till some time later, when I learned of a similar incident
+with a sadder ending. Not far from my camp a sportsman with his guide found a fawn
+hidden near the stream where they were fishing, and being completely won by the beautiful
+innocent, as most men are, they petted him to their hearts’ content. When an old doe,
+the mother presumably, appeared heading in their direction they thoughtfully withdrew,
+hiding at a distance to watch the family reunion. The doe seemed to hasten her steps
+when she saw that the fawn was on his feet, instead of lying close where she had left
+him; but when near him she suddenly stiffened, with the hair bristling on her neck.
+Two or three times she thrust out her nose, only to back away, and <span class="pageNum" id="pb194">[<a href="#pb194">194</a>]</span>once she raised the harsh alarm-cry that a doe utters when she smells danger. Then,
+as the little fellow trotted up to her on his wabbly legs, she leaped upon him in
+fury and trampled him to death.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p194width"><img src="images/p194.png" alt="Fowl." width="203" height="234"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb195">[<a href="#pb195">195</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch8" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e255">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p195.png" alt="VIII" width="562" height="339"></div>
+<h2 class="label">VIII</h2>
+<h2 class="main"><i>On Keeping Still</i></h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">To return to our first lesson, of quietude: it was impressed upon me unconsciously,
+like most good lessons, before I had any thought that I was learning the true way
+of the woods. The teacher was Nature herself (she seldom fails to quiet boy or man
+if left alone with him), and the school-room was a lonely berry-pasture surrounded
+by pine and hardwood forests. The berry-pickers, a happy and carefree lot, often let
+me go with them while I was yet too small to find my way among the tall swamp-blueberry
+bushes, and would leave me under a tree at the edge of the woods, with an armful of
+berry-laden branches to keep me busy while they wandered far away in <span class="pageNum" id="pb196">[<a href="#pb196">196</a>]</span>search of the best picking. Sitting there in the breathing solitude, occupied with
+the task of filling my tin cup with berries and well content with my lot (for the
+woods always had a fascination for me, and seemed most friendly when I was alone),
+I would presently “feel” that something was watching me. There was never any suggestion
+of fear in the impression, only an awakening to the fact that I was not alone, that
+some living thing was near me. Then, as I looked up expectantly, I would almost always
+find a bird slipping noiselessly through the branches overhead, or a beastie creeping
+through the cover at my side; and in his bright eyes, his shy approach, his withdrawal
+to appear in another spot, I read plainly enough that he was asking who I was or what
+I was doing there. And by a whistled tune or a drumming on my cup, or by flashing
+a sunbeam into his eyes from a pocket glass, I always tried to hold him as long as
+I could.
+</p>
+<p>This curious sense or feeling of being watched, by the way, is very real in some men,
+who do not regard it as a matter of chance or imagination. I have known of two elaborate
+courses of “laboratory” experiments which aimed to determine how far such a feeling
+is trustworthy, and both resulted in a neutral or fifty-fifty conclusion; but I wonder,
+if the experiments had been tried on <span class="pageNum" id="pb197">[<a href="#pb197">197</a>]</span>Indians or natural men under natural conditions, whether the result might not have
+been quite different. The fact that the first fifty men you meet get lost or turned
+around in a trackless forest is significant for the fifty, and for the vast majority
+of others; but it means nothing to the one bushman who can go where he will without
+thought or possibility of being lost, because of his sure sense of direction.
+</p>
+<p>So, possibly, with this feeling of being watched: it may be too intangible for experiment,
+or even for definition. Many times since childhood when I have been alone in the big
+woods, fishing or holding vigil by a wilderness lake, I have the feeling, at times
+vaguely and again definitely, that strange eyes were upon me. Occasionally, it is
+true, I have found nothing on looking around, either because no animal was there or
+because he was too well hidden to be seen; but much more often the feeling proved
+true to fact—so often, indeed, that I soon came to trust it without doubt or question,
+as Simmo my Indian still does, and a few other woodsmen I have known. It is possible
+that one’s ears or nose may account for the feeling; that some faint sound or odor
+may make itself felt so faintly that one has the impression of life without knowing
+through what channel the impression is received. Of that I am not at all sure; at
+the moment it <span class="pageNum" id="pb198">[<a href="#pb198">198</a>]</span>seems that some extra sense is at work, more subtle than smell or hearing; and, whether
+rightly or wrongly, it is apparently associated with the penetrating stare of an animal’s
+eyes on your back.
+</p>
+<p>To quote but a single incident, out of several that come to my memory: I was once
+sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, wholly intent on following the antics
+of a bull moose I had called into the open. He was on the other side of a small bay,
+ranging up and down, listening, threshing the bushes with his antlers, blowing his
+penny-trumpet at intervals,—in a dozen impatient ways showing what a young and foolish
+moose he was. A veteran would have kept to the cover till he had located what he came
+for. I had ceased my bellowing when the bull first answered, had been thrilled by
+his rush through the woods, had cheered him silently when he burst into the open,
+grunting and challenging like a champion; now I was quietly enjoying his bewilderment
+at not finding the tantalizing cow he had just heard calling. He did not see or suspect
+me; I had the comedy all to myself, and was keenly interested to know how he would
+act when he rounded the bay, as he certainly would, and found me sitting in his path.
+Because he was big and truculent and a fool, I did not know what to expect; my canoe
+floated ready against the outer end of a stranded log, where a <span class="pageNum" id="pb199">[<a href="#pb199">199</a>]</span>push would send it and me into deep water. I mention these details simply to show
+where my thoughts were.
+</p>
+<p>As I watched the play in the hushed twilight, suddenly came the feeling that something
+was watching me. The bull had started around the bay in my direction; possibly his
+eyes had picked me out—but no, he was in plain sight, and the feeling is always associated
+with something unseen. Without changing position I looked carefully all about, searching
+the lake and especially the woods, which were already in deep shadow. Finding no bird
+or beast, no motion, nothing alarming, I turned to question the bull, who had halted
+to sound his ridiculous trumpet. He was perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. He had
+not yet seen me; I had no fear of him, no anxiety whatever; yet again came the feeling,
+this time insistent, compelling, as if some one had touched me and said, “<i>Get away!</i>” I did so promptly, jumping to my feet; and out of a fir thicket behind me charged
+another bull that I had not dreamed of calling.
+</p>
+<p>By his size, his antlers, his fierce grunting, I recognized this brute on the instant.
+I had met him before, once on a trail, once on the lake shore, and had given him all
+the room he wanted. He was a grizzled old bull, morose and ugly, that seemed to have
+lost his native fear of man—from <span class="pageNum" id="pb200">[<a href="#pb200">200</a>]</span>a galling wound, perhaps, or from living an outcast life by himself. He was a little
+crazy, I judged. That he was dangerous I knew from the fact that he had previously
+made an unprovoked attack upon my Indian. He, too, had heard the call; had approached
+it from behind as stealthily as a cat, and had no doubt watched me, puzzled by my
+stillness, till my first decided motion brought him out on the jump. But I am wandering
+away from the small boy getting his first lessons in the woods, and learning that
+the important thing is to hold perfectly still.
+</p>
+<p>Later, when eight or nine years old, I went alone day after summer day to the wild
+berry-pastures. When my big pail would hold no more, I would make a bowl by bashing
+in the top of my hat, and fill it to the brim with luscious blueberries. These with
+a generous slice of bread made an excellent lunch, which I always ate within sight
+of a bird’s nest, or the den of a fox, or some other abode of life that I had discovered
+in the woods. And again, as I sat quiet in the solitude, the birds and small animals
+might be led by curiosity to approach as fearlessly as when I was too small to harm
+them. Now a vixen, finding me too near her den and cubs, would squall at me impatiently,
+like a little yellow dog with a cat’s voice; or again, a brooding bird that objected
+to my scrutiny <span class="pageNum" id="pb201">[<a href="#pb201">201</a>]</span>would first turn her tail to me, and presently come round again, and finally get mad
+and flutter about my head, scolding loudly to chivvy me away. So it often happened
+that one had nearer or happier or more illuminating glimpses of wild life in that
+small hour of rest than would be possible in a month of roaming the woods with gun
+or collecting-box.
+</p>
+<p>Once as I was eating my lunch under the pines, meanwhile watching a den I had found
+to see what might come out of it, a crow sailed in on noiseless wings and lit so near
+me that I hardly dared wink for fear he would notice the motion. My first thought
+was that he was nest-robbing (a crow is very discreet about that business), but he
+appeared rather to be listening, cocking his head this way or that; and from a lazy
+<i>hawing</i> in the distance I concluded he was satisfying himself that his flock was occupied
+elsewhere and that he was quite alone. Presently he hitched along the branch on which
+he stood and glided off to the crotch of a pine-tree, where he began to uncover what
+was hidden under a mat of brown needles. The first thing he took out was a piece of
+glass, which sparkled with rainbow colors in a stray glint of sunshine. Then came
+a bit of quartz with more sparkles, a shell, a silvery buckle, and some other glistening
+objects which <span class="pageNum" id="pb202">[<a href="#pb202">202</a>]</span>I could not make out. He turned his treasures over and over, all the while croaking
+to himself in a pleased kind of way; then he put them all back, covered them again
+with needles, and slipped away without a sound. Having kept tame crows, I knew that
+they are forever stealing and hiding whatever bright objects they find about the house;
+and here in the pine woods was a thing to indicate that wild crows, perhaps all of
+them, have the same covetous habit.
+</p>
+<p>Another day, a heavenly day when the budding woods were vocal and life stirred joyously
+in every thicket, I took a jews’-harp from my pocket and began to twang it idly. No,
+there was nothing premeditated in the act. I had been roving widely, following the
+winds or the bird-calls till a sunny opening invited me to rest, and had then fingered
+the music-maker with no more purpose than the poet’s boy, who “whistled as he went
+for want of thought.” The rhythmic, nasal twanging was a sound never heard in that
+place before or since, I think, and the first to come hurriedly to investigate was
+a bright-colored warbler, whose name I did not know; nor did I care to know it, feeling
+sure that by some note or sign he would presently suggest a name for himself, which
+would please me better than the barbarous jargon I might find in a bird-book. The
+alert little fellow <span class="pageNum" id="pb203">[<a href="#pb203">203</a>]</span>lit on a branch within three feet of my face, turning his head so as to view me with
+one eye or the other when I kept quiet, or chirping his indignation when I twanged
+the jews’-harp. Next came a jay, officious as the town constable; then more birds,
+half concealing their curiosity under gentle manners; and a squirrel who had no manners
+at all, scolding everybody and scurrying about in a fashion which seemed dangerous
+to his excited head.
+</p>
+<p>As I watched this little assembly, which seemed to be asking, “What’s up? What’s up?”
+the meaning of it suddenly dawned on me like a surprising discovery. When I entered
+the opening I knew simply that birds or beasts would draw near if they found me quiet;
+before I left it I had found the explanation: that all the wood folk are intensely
+curious, as curious as so many human gossips, but without any of their malice; that
+by inner compulsion they are drawn to any strange sight or sound, as a crowd collects
+when a man cuts a caper or throws a fit or raises a whoop or looks up into the air,
+or does anything else out of the ordinary. When you appear in the quiet woods every
+bird or beast within sight or hearing is agog to know about you; they are like the
+Nantucket-Islanders, who named their one public hack the “Who’s Come?” Because you
+are a stranger, and <span class="pageNum" id="pb204">[<a href="#pb204">204</a>]</span>what you do is none of their business, they are all the more interested in you and
+your doings; you come to them with all the charm of the unknown, the unexpected; and
+they will gratify their curiosity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you
+know how to stimulate or play upon it and to hold still while enjoying it.
+</p>
+<p>All that is natural enough, as natural as life; but it is not written in any book
+of natural history, and it came to me that day as a wonderful discovery. It suggested
+at once the right way to study birds or beasts, as living creatures; it has since
+led to many a fascinating glimpse of the wood-folk comedy, and to a lifelong pleasure
+which is too elusive to be set down in words. At the bottom of it, I suppose, is the
+fact that in every wild or natural creature is something, at once mysterious and familiar,
+which appeals powerfully to your interest or sympathy, as if you saw a faint shadow
+of your other self, or caught a fleeting memory of that vanished time when you lived
+in a child’s world of wonder and delight.
+</p>
+<p>From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds and animals in a child’s impersonal
+way; which, strangely enough, ascribes personality to every living thing, yes, and
+honors it. These inquisitive little rangers of the wood or the berry-pasture, shy
+and exquisitely alert, were all individuals like <span class="pageNum" id="pb205">[<a href="#pb205">205</a>]</span>myself, each one seeking the joy of life in his own happy way. My only regret was
+that I was too clumsy, too obtrusive, too ignorant of the way of the wild, and so
+frightened many a timid bird or beast that I would gladly have known.
+</p>
+<p>All this, too, is perfectly natural; the instinctive attitude of a child, as of an
+animal, is one of curiosity rather than of fear or destruction. If left to his natural
+instincts, a child meets every living creature with a mixture of shyness or timidity
+and bright interest; he becomes an enemy of the wild, learning to frighten and harry
+and kill, not from nature but from the evil example of his elders. I could prove that
+beyond a peradventure, I think, if this were the place; but there is no need of any
+man’s demonstration. Go yourself to the big woods at twilight, leaving custom behind
+you; go alone and unarmed; hear that rustle of leaves, that tread of soft feet which
+brings you to an instant halt; see that strange beast which glides out into the trail
+and turns to look at you with luminous eyes. Then quickly examine your own mental
+state, and you will know the truth of a man’s natural or instinctive attitude toward
+the mystery of life.
+</p>
+<p>Unfortunately the wild birds and beasts near our home have learned that man is unnatural,
+a creature to be feared, and their curiosity has given <span class="pageNum" id="pb206">[<a href="#pb206">206</a>]</span>place to another motive. The young still display their natural bent freely; but the
+old have heard too many of our guns, have been too often disturbed by our meddlesome
+dogs or worthless cats, have suffered too much at the hands of outrageous egg-collectors
+or skin-collectors to be any longer drawn to us when we go afield. As you go farther
+away from civilization it becomes easier to play on the animals’ native curiosity;
+in the far North or the remote jungle, or wherever man is happily unknown, they still
+come fearlessly to investigate you, or to stand quiet, like the ptarmigan, watching
+with innocent eyes as you pass them by. In the intermediate regions, which are harried
+by sportsmen for a brief period in the autumn and then left to a long solitude, the
+animals are wild or tame according to season; and it has seemed to me, not always
+but on occasions, that in some subtle way they distinguish between man and man, taking
+alarm at the first sniff of a hunter, but stopping to show their interest in a harmless
+woods-rover.
+</p>
+<p>This last is a mere theory, to be sure, and to some it may appear a fanciful one;
+but it rests, be assured, upon repeated experience. Thus, I came once at evening to
+a camp of hunters who were in a sorry plight. They were in a good deer country, and
+had counted largely on venison to supply <span class="pageNum" id="pb207">[<a href="#pb207">207</a>]</span>their table; but for more than a week they had tasted no meat, and they were very
+hungry. The deer were wild as hawks, they assured me. They had hunted every day; but
+because of the game’s wildness and the dry weather, which made the leaves rustle loudly
+underfoot, it had proved impossible to approach near enough for a shot—all of which
+made me think that, if you want to see game, you should leave your gun at home. I
+had met about a dozen deer that day; most of them were within easy range, and a few
+of them stood with questioning eyes while a man might have made ready his camera and
+taken a picture of them.
+</p>
+<p>The very next morning, and within a mile of the hunters’ camp, I witnessed a familiar
+but fascinating display of deer nature. At sunrise I approached a bog, bordering a
+stream where a few good trout might be found, and on the edge of the opening stood
+a doe and her well-grown fawn, not twenty yards away. The fawn, a little buck with
+the nubs of his first antlers showing, threw up his head as I appeared, and in the
+same instant I dropped to the ground behind a mossy log. No whistle or sound of alarm
+followed the action; so I scraped a mat of moss from the log, put it on for a bonnet,
+and cautiously raised my head.
+</p>
+<p>The old doe was still feeding; the buck stood <span class="pageNum" id="pb208">[<a href="#pb208">208</a>]</span>like a living statue, his whole attention fastened on the spot where I had disappeared.
+He had seen something, he knew not what, and was waiting for it to show itself again.
+When my bonnet appeared his eyes seemed to enlarge and flash as he caught the motion.
+Without changing his footing, for his surprise seemed to have rooted him in the ground,
+he began to sway his body to left or right, stretching his head high or dropping it
+low, taking a dozen graceful attitudes in order to view the queer bit of moss from
+different angles. Then he slowly raised a fore foot, put it down very gently, raised
+it again, stamped it down hard. Getting no response to his challenge, he sidled over
+to his mother, still keeping his eyes fastened on the log. At his touch or call she
+lifted her head, pointing her nose straight at me, as if he had somehow told her where
+to give heed.
+</p>
+<p>It was a wonderful sight, the multicolored bog spread like a rug at the feet of the
+glorious October woods, and standing on the crimson fringe of it these two beautiful
+creatures, demanding with flashing eyes who the intruder might be. For a full minute,
+while I held motionless, the doe kept her eyes steadily on the log; then, “Nothing
+there, little buck; don’t worry,” she said in her own silent way, and went to feeding
+once more.
+</p>
+<p>“But there is something; I saw it,” insisted the <span class="pageNum" id="pb209">[<a href="#pb209">209</a>]</span>little buck, nudging his mother by swinging his head against her side. That was the
+first and only time, in that quick swing, when he took his eyes from what attracted
+them. The doe looked a second time, saw nothing uncommon, and had turned to feed along
+the edge of the opening when the little buck recalled her in some way. “Can’t you
+see it, that white thing like a face under the moss?” he was saying. “There! it moved
+again!”
+</p>
+<p>The mother, whose back was turned to me, twisted her head around as if to humor him,
+and to interest her I swayed the moss bonnet to and fro like a pendulum. At that she
+whirled, surprise written large on her, and I dropped my head, leaving her staring.
+When I looked again both deer were coming nearer, the mother ahead, the fawn holding
+back as if to say, “Careful now! It’s big, and it’s hiding just behind that log.”
+So they drew on warily, stopping to stamp a fore foot, and every time they challenged
+I gave the bonnet an answering wag. When they were so near that I knew they must soon
+distinguish my eyes from the moss, I sank out of sight. I was listening for their
+alarm-call or for the thud of their flying feet when a gray muzzle slid over the log,
+and I laid my hand fair on the mother’s cheek before she bounded away.
+</p>
+<p>Now there was nothing strange or new in all <span class="pageNum" id="pb210">[<a href="#pb210">210</a>]</span>that; on the contrary, it was very much like what I had observed in other inquisitive
+deer. The only surprising part of the comedy was that the doe, though she had felt
+the touch of my hand and no doubt smelled the man behind it, stopped short after a
+few jumps and turned to stare at the log again. That she was still curious, still
+unsatisfied, was plain enough; what puzzles me to know is, whether she would have
+acted in the same way if one of the hungry hunters had been waiting in my shoes for
+the chance or moment to kill her.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p210width"><img src="images/p210.png" alt="Bird." width="179" height="222"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb211">[<a href="#pb211">211</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch9" class="div1 last-child chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e265">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p211.png" alt="IX" width="558" height="337"></div>
+<h2 class="label">IX</h2>
+<h2 class="main">At Close Range</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">It is easy, much easier than you think, to get close to wild birds and beasts; for
+after you have met them a few times in the friendly, impersonal way I have tried to
+describe, two interesting traits appear: the first, that they do not see you clearly
+so long as you hold still; the second, that even their keen noses lose track of you
+after you have been quiet for a little time.
+</p>
+<p>The eye is a weak point in all animals I have chanced to observe, which apparently
+depend less on sight than on any other sense—so far as safety goes, that is. In gratifying
+their curiosity they seem to be all eyes. At other times they will catch an abrupt
+or unusual motion quickly enough; <span class="pageNum" id="pb212">[<a href="#pb212">212</a>]</span>but they are strangely blind to any motionless object however large or small. Repeatedly
+when I have been sitting quiet, without concealment but with “neutral” clothes that
+harmonize with the soft woods colors, I have known deer, moose, caribou, bear, wolf,
+fox, lynx, otter, alert beasts of every kind, to approach within a few yards, giving
+no heed till a chirp or a slight motion called their attention. Then they would whirl
+upon me in astonishment, telling me by their attitude that till then they had not
+noticed or suspected me. Almost invariably at such times animals of the deer family
+would come a step nearer, their heads high, their eyes asking questions; but beasts
+of prey after one keen look would commonly drop their heads, as if I were of no consequence,
+and slyly circle me to get my wind. In either event success or a better view of the
+animal depended on just one condition, which was to hold absolutely still. So long
+as I met that condition, none of these wary beasts seemed to have any clear notion
+what they were looking at.
+</p>
+<p>Occasionally, indeed, their lack of discernment almost passes belief. One winter day,
+while crossing a frozen lake in Ontario, I noticed a distant speck moving on the snow,
+and stopped in my tracks to watch it. The speck turned my way, drew near and changed
+into an otter, who came <span class="pageNum" id="pb213">[<a href="#pb213">213</a>]</span>rollicking along in his merry way, taking one or two quick jumps on his abbreviated
+legs and a long slide on his ample belly. As the air was dry and very still I had
+no fear of his nose, which is not as sensitive as many others (perhaps because of
+the peculiar valve or flap which closes it tight when an otter swims under water);
+but his eyes and other senses are extraordinarily good, and it seemed impossible that
+he should overlook a man standing erect on the snowy ice, as conspicuous as a fly
+in the milk. So I watched the approach with lively interest, wondering how Keeonekh
+would act in comparison with other members of his weasel family when he found himself
+near me, whether he would dart away like a fisher, or ignore me like a mink, or show
+his teeth at me like a little stoat.
+</p>
+<p>On he came, confidently, as an otter travels, giving no heed to the enemy in his path,
+till he halted with a paw resting on one of my snow-shoes and began to wiggle his
+broad muzzle, as if he found something in the air which he did not like. For several
+moments he hesitated, sniffing here, listening there, looking sharply about the lake,
+into the near-by woods, everywhere except up into my face, and then went on as he
+had been heading, leaving a straight trail behind him. No man can tell what was in
+his head, and a very <span class="pageNum" id="pb214">[<a href="#pb214">214</a>]</span>intelligent head it is; but his action seemed to say that he did not see me when he
+passed literally under my nose. To him I was merely a stump, one of a dozen that projected
+here or there above the ice near the shore.
+</p>
+<p>Such an incident would be merely freakish if it happened once; but it happens again
+and again, becoming almost common or typical, when a man stands motionless in the
+presence of other birds or beasts. Twice in the big woods has the Canada lynx, a dull
+beast in comparison with the otter, passed me with an unseeing stare in his wild eyes.
+And I have crouched in the snow on a treeless barren while a band of caribou filed
+past, so near that I could see the muscles ripple under their sleek skins and hear
+the <i>click-click</i> of their hoofs as they walked. The greater part of the herd did not even notice me;
+the rest threw a passing glance in my direction, one halting as if he had a moment’s
+doubt, and went on without a sign of recognition.
+</p>
+<p>The eyes of birds are keener, as a rule; but it is still a question with me how much
+or how little they see of what is plain as a frog on a log to human vision. An owl
+has excellent eyes, which are at their best in the soft twilight; yet once as I sat
+quiet in the dusk a horned-owl swooped and struck at a motion of my head, not seeing
+the rest <span class="pageNum" id="pb215">[<a href="#pb215">215</a>]</span>of me, one must think, since he is quick to take alarm when a man appears. Another
+owl showed even less discernment in that he overlooked me, head and all, at a yard’s
+distance and tried to get his game out from under my feet.
+</p>
+<p>A little dog had followed me that day, keeping out of sight till we were far from
+home, when he showed himself in a waggish way, as if he knew I would not have the
+heart to tie him up in that lonely place, as he deserved. All day long he had a vociferous
+and a “bully” time making a nuisance of himself, stirring up a hornets’ nest in every
+peaceful spot, chasing deer out of sight with a blithe rowdydow, swimming out to the
+raft on which I was fly-fishing, jumping in to get tangled in my landing-net when
+I reached for a big trout—in twenty ways showing that his business was to take care
+of me, though he was no dog of mine.
+</p>
+<p>Late in the afternoon, as I rested beside the homeward trail, the little dog rambled
+off by himself, still looking for trouble, like all his breed. Presently there was
+a yelp, a scurry, a glimpse of broad wings swooping, and back came the trouble-seeker
+like a streak, his eyes saying, “Look at this thing I brought you!” and his ears flapping
+like a pair of wings to help him along. Over him hovered a big barred-owl, grim as
+fate, striking, missing, mounting, swooping again, brushing me with <span class="pageNum" id="pb216">[<a href="#pb216">216</a>]</span>his wings as he whirled around my head. Between my heels and the log on which I was
+sitting my protector wedged himself securely; the owl with a vicious snapping of his
+beak sailed up into an evergreen and made himself invisible. In a moment or two the
+little dog came out and was wagging his tail mightily over the adventure when the
+owl slanted down on noiseless wings and struck a double set of claws into him. Then
+I interfered, rising to my feet; and then, for the first time I think, the owl saw
+me as something other than a stump and vanished quickly in the spruce woods.
+</p>
+<p>Hawks likewise have marvelous eyes for all things that move; but I began to question
+the quality of their vision one day when I was watching a deer, and a red-shouldered
+hawk lit so near me that I reached out a hand and caught him.
+</p>
+<p>Another afternoon I came upon a goshawk, keenest of all the falcons, that had just
+killed a grouse in the tote-road I was following. He darted away as I came round a
+bend; but thinking he might soon return, for he is a bold and a persistent kind of
+pirate, I entered the woods at a swift walk, as if going away. Then I worked cautiously
+back to the road through a thicket, and waited on a log in deep shadow, some fifty
+yards above where the grouse lay undisturbed. <span class="pageNum" id="pb217">[<a href="#pb217">217</a>]</span>Luckily I had a rifle, an accurate little twenty-two, often carried as medicine for
+“vermin,” and I intended to kill the goshawk at the first chance. He is the viking
+among birds, and as such has a romantic interest; but wherever he appears he is a
+veritable pest, the most destructive of the hungry hordes that come down from the
+North to play havoc with our game.
+</p>
+<p>For a long time the goshawk hovered about, sweeping on tireless wings high above the
+trees; but though I was quiet enough to deceive any bird or beast, he held warily
+aloof. Once he disappeared, remaining so long away that I was beginning to think he
+had wearied of the game of patience, when I heard an eery call and saw him wheeling
+over the road again. His absence became clear a little later when he perched on a
+blasted pine, far out of range, where he remained watching for fifteen or twenty minutes,
+his only motion being an occasional turning of the head. That he was hungry and bound
+to have his own was plain enough; the puzzle was why he did not come and get it, for
+it seemed highly improbable that he would notice a motionless figure at that distance.
+I think now that he was sailing high over my head when I re-entered the trail; that
+he knew where I was all the time, not because he saw me on the log, but because he
+did not see me <span class="pageNum" id="pb218">[<a href="#pb218">218</a>]</span>go away. Before sunset he headed off toward the mountain, going early to roost with
+all his kind.
+</p>
+<p>Dawn found me back on the old road, as much to test the matter of vision as to put
+an end to the game-destroyer. As a precaution I had changed clothes, and now shifted
+position, avoiding the log because the wary bird would surely take a look at it before
+coming down. My stand was a weathered stump beside the road, against which I sat on
+a carpet of moss, without concealment of any kind. At a short distance lay the grouse,
+a poor crumpled thing, just as he had wilted under the hawk’s swoop.
+</p>
+<p>Thus a half-hour or more passed comfortably. A gorgeous cock-partridge sauntered into
+the open, saw me when I nodded to him, and went slowly off with that graceful, balancing
+motion which a grouse affects when he is well satisfied with himself. Then, as the
+sun rose, there was a swift-moving shadow, a rustle of pinions; the goshawk swept
+down the road in front of me and lit beside his game. He was a handsome bandit, in
+full adult plumage; his gray breast was penciled in shadowy lines, while his back
+was a foggy blue, as if in his northern home he had caught the sheen of the heavens
+above and of rippling waters beneath his flight. His folded wings stood out squarely
+from his shoulders with an impression of power, <span class="pageNum" id="pb219">[<a href="#pb219">219</a>]</span>like an eagle’s. There was something noble in his poise, in his challenging eye, in
+the forward thrust of his fierce head; but the spell was broken at the first step.
+He moved awkwardly, unwillingly it seemed; his great curving talons interfered with
+his footing when he touched the earth.
+</p>
+<p>This time, instead of a rifle, there was a trim shotgun across my knees. The hawk
+was mine whether he stood quiet or leaped into swift flight, and feeling sure of him
+now I watched awhile, wondering whether he would break up his game with his claws,
+as some owls do, or tear it to pieces with his hooked beak. For a moment he did neither,
+but stood splendidly alert over his kill. Once he turned his head completely around
+over either shoulder, sweeping his piercing glance over me, but seeing nothing unusual.
+Then he seized his game in one foot and struck his beak into the breast, making the
+feathers fly as he laid the delicate flesh open. When I found myself weakening, growing
+sentimental at the thought that it was his last meal, his last taste of freedom and
+the wild, I remembered the grouse and got quietly on my feet. Though busy with his
+feast, he caught the first shadow of a motion; I can still see the gleam in his wild
+eyes as he sprang aloft.
+</p>
+<p>I thought him beyond all harm as he lay on his back, one outstretched wing among the
+feathers <span class="pageNum" id="pb220">[<a href="#pb220">220</a>]</span>of his victim; but he struck like a flash when I reached down for him carelessly.
+“Take that! and that! and remember me!” he said, driving his weapons up with astonishing
+force, a force that kills or paralyzes his game at the first grip. Four of his needle-pointed
+talons went to the bone, and the others were well buried in the flesh of my arm. The
+old viking had been some time with his ancestors before I pried him loose.
+</p>
+<p>As for the sense of smell, on which most animals depend for accurate information,
+I have tried numerous experiments with deer, moose, bear and other creatures to learn
+how far they can wind a man, and how their powers compare one with another. There
+is no definite answer to the problem, so baffling are the conditions of observing
+these shy beasts; but you are in for some surprises, at least, when you attempt to
+solve it in the open. You will learn, for example, that when a gale is blowing the
+animals are more at sea than in a dead calm; or that in a gusty wind you can approach
+them about as easily from one side as from another. Such a wind rolls and eddies violently,
+rebounding from every hill or point or shore in such erratic fashion that the animals
+have no means of locating a danger when they catch a fleeting sniff of it. It is for
+this reason, undoubtedly, that all game is uncommonly <span class="pageNum" id="pb221">[<a href="#pb221">221</a>]</span>wild on a windy day: the constant motion of leaves or tossing boughs breeds confusion
+in their eyes, and the woodsy smells are so broken by cross-currents that they cannot
+be traced to their source. So it has happened more than once on a gusty day that a
+deer, catching my scent on the rebound, has whirled and rushed straight at me, producing
+the momentary illusion that he was charging.
+</p>
+<p>With a steady but not strong wind blowing in their direction, I have seen deer become
+alarmed while I was yet a quarter-mile away; this on a lake, where there was nothing
+to interfere with the breeze or the scent. On the burnt lands or the open barrens
+I have seen bear and caribou throw up their heads and break away while I was even
+farther removed. In a light breeze the distance is much shorter, varying from fifty
+to two hundred yards, according to the amount of moisture in the air. On days that
+are still or very dry, or when the air is filled with smoke from a forest fire (the
+latter soon inflames all sensitive nostrils), the animals are at sea again, and depend
+less on their noses than on their eyes or ears.
+</p>
+<p>Another surprising thing is, that the animal’s ability to detect you through his sense
+of smell is largely governed by your own activity or bodily condition. Thus, when
+a man is perspiring freely or moving quickly, his scent is stronger and <span class="pageNum" id="pb222">[<a href="#pb222">222</a>]</span>travels much wider than when he is sauntering about. But if a man sits absolutely
+quiet, a clean man especially, no animal can detect him beyond a few feet, I think,
+for the reason that a resting man is like a resting bird or beast in that he gives
+off very little body scent, which remains on the ground close about him instead of
+floating off on the air currents. Even when the trees are tossing in a gale there
+is little stir on the ground, not in the woods at least, and the closer you hold to
+Mother Earth the less likelihood is there of any beast smelling you.
+</p>
+<p>All ground-nesting birds depend for their lives on this curious provision of nature.
+Were it not for the fact that practically no scent escapes while they are brooding
+their eggs, very few of them would live to bring forth a family in a wood nightly
+traversed by such keen-nosed enemies as the fox and the weasel. My old setter would
+wind a running grouse or quail at an incredible distance, and would follow him by
+picking his scent from the air; but I have taken that same dog on a leash near the
+same birds when they were brooding their eggs, and he could not or would not detect
+them unless he were brought within a few feet, or (a rare occurrence) unless a creeping
+ground-breeze blew directly from the nest into his face.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb223">[<a href="#pb223">223</a>]</span></p>
+<p>The same provision guards animals, such as deer and caribou, which build no dens but
+leave their helpless young on the ground. Two or three times, after finding a fawn
+in the woods, I have tested his concealment by means of my young dog’s nose; and I
+may add that Rab will point a deer as stanchly as he points a grouse or woodcock,
+for he is still in the happy, irresponsible stage when everything that lives in the
+woods is game to him. So long as the fawn remains motionless where his mother hid
+him, the dog must be almost on top of him before pointing or showing any sign of game.
+But if the little fellow runs or even rises to his feet at our approach (fawns are
+apt to do this as they grow older), the dog seems to catch the scent <i>after</i> the first motion; he begins to cat-foot, his nose up as in following an air trail,
+and steadies to a point while he is still many yards away from where the fawn was
+hiding.
+</p>
+<p>The nose of a wolf is keener than that of any dog I ever knew; yet I once trailed
+a pack of wolves that passed within sixteen measured feet of where two deer were sleeping
+in a hole in the snow. The wolves were hunting, too, for they killed and partially
+ate a buck a little farther on; but the trail said that they had passed close to these
+sleeping deer without detecting them.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb224">[<a href="#pb224">224</a>]</span></p>
+<p>As for the man-scent, you may judge of that by the violent start or the headlong rush
+when an animal catches the first alarming whiff of it. If he passes quietly on his
+way, therefore, you may be reasonably sure he has not smelled you. To the latter conclusion
+I have been forced many times when I have been watching in the woods, sitting quiet
+for hours at a stretch, and a deer or bear or fox, or some other beast with nose as
+keen as a brier, has passed at a dozen yards’ distance without a sign to indicate
+that he was aware of me. Some of these animals came much nearer; so near, in fact,
+that I was scary of a closer approach until I had called their attention to what lay
+ahead of them.
+</p>
+<p>So long as you are seen or suspected, you need have little fear of any wild beast
+(only the tame or half-tame are dangerous), but a brute that stumbles upon you in
+an unexpected place or moment is always a problem. Nine times out of ten he will fall
+all over himself in his haste to get away; but the tenth time he may fall upon you
+and give you a mauling. Moose, for example, are apt to strike a terrible blow with
+their fore feet, or to upset a canoe when the jack-light approaches them; not to attack,
+I think, at least not consciously, but in blind panic or to ward off a fancied enemy.
+So when I have watched from the shore of a lake <span class="pageNum" id="pb225">[<a href="#pb225">225</a>]</span>and a moose came swinging along without noticing me, I have risen to my feet or thrown
+my hat at the big brute when he was as near as I cared to have him. And more than
+once, after a tremendous start of surprise, he has come nearer with his hackles up
+as soon as he got over the first effect of my demonstration. Yet when I am roaming
+the woods that same brute will catch my scent at from two to five hundred yards, and
+rush away before I can get even a glimpse of him.
+</p>
+<p>That the same surprising sense-limitation is upon deer and other game animals may
+be inferred from the following experience, which is typical of many others. I was
+perched among some cedar roots on the shore of a pond, one September day, watching
+a buck with the largest antlers I have ever seen on one of his kind. I had been some
+time quiet when he glided out to feed in a little bay, on my right; and my heart was
+with him in the wish that he might keep his noble crown through the hunting season,
+for his own pleasure and the adornment of the woods and the confusion of all head-hunters.
+There was no breeze; but a moistened finger told of a faint drift of air from the
+lake to the woods.
+</p>
+<p>As I watched the buck, there came to my ears a crunching of gravel from the opposite
+direction, and two deer appeared on the point at my left, <span class="pageNum" id="pb226">[<a href="#pb226">226</a>]</span>heading briskly down into the bay. They passed between my outstretched feet and the
+water’s edge, where the strip of shore was perhaps three yards wide; then they turned
+in my direction, seeing or smelling nothing, went slowly up the bank and halted at
+the edge of the woods to the right and a little behind me, so close that I dared not
+move even my eyes to follow them. I measured the distance afterward, and found that
+from their hoof-marks to the cedar root against which I rested was less than eight
+feet. Imperceptibly I turned for another look, and saw both deer at attention, their
+heads luckily pointed away from me. They were regarding the big buck intently, as
+if to question him. They showed no alarm as yet; but they were plainly uneasy, searching
+the forest on all sides and at times turning to look over my head upon the breathless
+lake. Every nervous action said that they found something wrong in the air, some hint
+or taint or warning which they could not define. So they moved alertly into the woods,
+halting, listening, testing the air, using all their senses to locate a danger which
+they had passed and left behind them.
+</p>
+<p>From such experiences one might reasonably conclude that, like the brooding grouse
+or the hidden fawn, a motionless man gives off so little scent that the keenest nose
+is at fault until it <span class="pageNum" id="pb227">[<a href="#pb227">227</a>]</span>comes almost within touching distance. If any further proof is needed, you may find
+it when you sleep in the open, and shy creatures draw near without any fear of you.
+By daylight deer, bear and moose are extremely timid; they rarely come within eyeshot
+of your camp, and they vanish at the first sniff which tells them that you have invaded
+their feeding-grounds. But when you are well asleep the same animals will pass boldly
+through your camp-yard; or they will awaken you, as they have many times awakened
+me, when you are tenting or sleeping under the stars by some outlying pond. If you
+lie quiet, content to listen, the invading animal will move freely here or there without
+concern; but no sooner do you begin to stir, however quietly, than he catches the
+warning scent, and a thudding of earth or a smashing of brush tells the rest of the
+story.
+</p>
+<p>I recall one night, cloudy and very still, when I slept under my canoe on a strip
+of sand beside a wilderness lake. The movement of an animal near at hand awoke me.
+In the black darkness I could see nothing; but somehow I knew he was big, and aside
+from the crepitation of the sand, which I plainly heard, I seemed to feel the brute
+near me. For a moment there was a pause, a dead silence; then came a thump, a rattlety-bang;
+the canoe shook as something hit the lower end of <span class="pageNum" id="pb228">[<a href="#pb228">228</a>]</span>it, and the creature moved away. There was nothing to be done without eyes, so I snuggled
+the blanket closer and went to sleep again. In the morning there were the tracks of
+a moose, a bull as I judged from the shape of his feet, to say that he had come down
+the shore at a fast walk, halted, stepped over the stern of the canoe, and went on
+without hastening his pace.
+</p>
+<p>That was odd enough; but more surprising were some tracks on the other side, between
+the bow of the canoe and the woods. Very faint and dainty tracks they were, as if
+a soft pad had touched the sand here and there in an uneven line; but they told of
+a fox who had come trotting along under the bank, and who had passed in the night
+without awakening me. That neither he nor the moose had smelled the sleeping man,
+or nothing alarming in him at least, is about as near to certainty as you will come
+in interpreting animal action.
+</p>
+<hr class="tb"><p>
+</p>
+<p>There is another and not wholly unreasonable hypothesis which may help to explain
+such phenomena; namely, that it is not the scent of man but of excitement, anger,
+blood-lust or some other abnormal quality which alarms a wild animal. It sounds queer,
+I know, to say that anger can be smelled; but it is more than probable that anger
+or fierce excitement of any kind distils in the body <span class="pageNum" id="pb229">[<a href="#pb229">229</a>]</span>a kind of poison which is physical and sensible. Such excitement certainly weakens
+a man, clogging his system with the ashes of its hot fires; and there is no reason
+why it should not smell to earth as well as to high heaven.
+</p>
+<p>You have but to open your eyes and expand your nostrils for some evidence of this
+matter. Bees when angered give off a pungent odor, which is so different from the
+ordinary smell of the hive that even your dull nose may detect the change of temper.
+The same is true of even cold-blooded reptiles. When you find a rattler or a black-snake
+squirming in the sun, you can smell him faintly at a few yards’ distance. Now stir
+him up with a pole, or pin him to the earth by pressing a forked stick with short
+prongs over his neck. As the snake becomes enraged he pours off a rank odor, very
+different from the musky smell that first attracted your notice, and it travels much
+wider, and clings to your clothes for an hour afterward. It is not only possible but
+very likely, therefore, that strong emotions affect the bodies of all creatures in
+a way perceptible to senses other than sight. If so, one man who is peaceable and
+another who is angry or highly excited may give off such different odors that a brute
+with sensitive nostrils may be merely curious about the one and properly afraid of
+the other.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb230">[<a href="#pb230">230</a>]</span></p>
+<p>That wild animals instinctively fear the scent of humanity, as such, is probably not
+true. The notion arises, I think, from judging the natural animal by those we have
+made unnatural by abuse or persecution. Whenever man penetrates a wild region for
+the first time he finds, as a rule, that the animals have little fear of him, the
+tameness of wild game having been noted with surprise by almost every explorer. It
+has been noted also, but without surprise, by saints and ascetics who “for the greater
+glory of God” have adopted a life of solitude and meditation, and who have often found
+the birds or beasts about their hermitage to be quite fearless of them, and receptive
+of their kindness. Not till the abundant flocks and herds of a new region have been
+harried and decimated by senseless slaughter do the survivors begin to be fearful
+and unapproachable, as we unfortunately know them. Yet even now, no sooner do we drop
+our persecution and assume a rational or humane attitude than the wild ducks come
+to the boat landing of a winter hotel, deer feed at our haystacks, and bears come
+in broad daylight to comfort themselves at our garbage-cans. Such things could hardly
+be if the fear of man were an age-old or instinctive inheritance.
+</p>
+<p>Nearer home, on any farm bordering the wilderness, you may see wild deer feeding quite
+tamely <span class="pageNum" id="pb231">[<a href="#pb231">231</a>]</span>about the edges of the cleared fields all summer. I recall one such farm in Maine,
+where the owner had fifteen acres of green oats waving over virgin soil—a glorious
+crop for me, but for him an occasion of lamentation. You could go through that field
+at any hour before six in the morning or after six at night and find a dozen deer
+with a moose or two making themselves at home. The owner’s cattle were kept out by
+a rail fence; but the moose simply leaned against the fence and went through, while
+the nimble deer sailed over the obstruction like grasshoppers. On all such farms the
+deer have the scent of man almost constantly in their nostrils, and they are simply
+watchful, running when you approach too near, but turning after a short flight to
+have a look at you. At times you may see them feeding when the scent of laborers or
+fishermen blows fairly over them. But when October comes, and the law is “off,” and
+wild-eyed hunters appear with guns in their hands and death in their thoughts, then
+the same deer quickly become as other and wilder creatures, rushing off in alarm at
+the first sniff of an enemy. The fact and the changed action are evident enough; the
+only interesting question is, To what extent does the smell of man change when he
+changes his peaceable ways?
+</p>
+<p>Two or three times I have had opportunity to <span class="pageNum" id="pb232">[<a href="#pb232">232</a>]</span>test the effect of the human scent in another way, the first time being when I had
+the good luck to see a natural child and a natural animal together. The child, a baby
+girl just beginning to toddle, was making a journey by means of a comfortable Indian
+<i>paukee</i> on my back, and I had left her in an opening beside a portage trail while I went
+back to my canoe for a thing I had forgotten. While I was gone, three deer sauntered
+into the opening. They saw the baby, and were instantly as curious about her as so
+many gossips, a little spotted fawn especially. The baby saw them, and began creeping
+eagerly forward, calling or “crowing” as she went. The deer saw and heard and smelled
+her every moment; yet they walked around her with springy steps, now on this side,
+now on that, showing a world of curiosity in their bright eyes, but never a sign of
+fear.
+</p>
+<p>From a distance I watched the lovely scene, kindling at the beauty of it, or feeling
+a bit anxious when I saw the sharp feet of the old doe a little too near the sunny
+head or the outstretched hands. Then an eddy of wind from the mountain got behind
+me and whirled over the deer. They caught the scent and were away with a wild alarm-call,
+their white flags flying, and the baby waving by-by as they vanished in the woods.
+</p>
+<p>Quite naturally, therefore, when a sensitive <span class="pageNum" id="pb233">[<a href="#pb233">233</a>]</span>animal runs away from me, I find myself thinking that perhaps it is not the smell
+of humanity but of some evil trait or quality which frightens him. I first laid down
+this hypothesis after meeting a strange, childlike man, who had a passion for roaming
+by himself in the fields or woods. White men, after a puzzling acquaintance, would
+tap their heads or call him crazy; an Indian would look once in his eyes and say,
+very softly, “The Great Spirit has touched him.” He was all gentleness, without a
+thought or possibility of harm in his nature. He was also without fear, and perhaps
+for this reason he inspired no fear in others. When he appeared in the woods, singing
+to himself, the animals would watch him for a moment, and then go their ways quietly,
+as if they understood him. What would happen if a race of such men lived near the
+wood folk must be left to the imagination.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p233width"><img src="images/p233.png" alt="Two running wolves." width="408" height="219"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb235">[<a href="#pb235">235</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="div0 last-child part">
+<h2 class="main">My Pond: a Symphony of the Woods</h2>
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure p235width"><img src="images/p235.png" alt="Pond with text: “My Pond: a Symphony of the Woods”." width="300" height="440"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb237">[<a href="#pb237">237</a>]</span></p>
+<div id="ch10" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e275">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p237.png" alt="X" width="558" height="329"></div>
+<h2 class="label">X</h2>
+<h2 class="main">The Trail</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">To reach my pond you must leave your canoe on the shore of Sungeegamook, the home
+lake, and go eastward through the big woods. Yonder is the landing, that bank of green
+topped by “everlasting” and blue asters, with a cleft like an arched doorway in the
+forest behind it. A rugged jack-pine leans out over a bit of shingle, as if to indicate
+a good place to beach your canoe, and there is something curiously alive, almost sentient,
+in its attitude. The old tree seems to watch your approach; through its leaves runs
+a low murmur of welcome as you step ashore.
+</p>
+<p>Entering the woods (and because you are alone, and therefore natural, something in
+their dim <span class="pageNum" id="pb238">[<a href="#pb238">238</a>]</span>aisles, their mysterious depths, their breathing silence, makes you go gently) you
+find yourself in an old logging-road, once a garish symbol of man’s destructiveness,
+but growing yearly more subdued, more beautiful, since Nature began her work of healing.
+The earth beneath your feet, the restful earth which the lumbermen left torn by iron
+tools or rent by dynamite, has again put on her soft-colored garments. Feathery beds
+of fern push boldly into the road from shadowy places; wild grasses fill all its sunny
+openings with their bloom and fragrance; and winding down through shade or sunshine
+comes a trail made by the feet of deer and moose. Already these timid animals have
+adopted the forgotten road as a runway; you may meet them here when you return in
+the evening twilight.
+</p>
+<p>Everywhere beside the trail are old marks of the destroyer. Noble maples or cedars
+that were centuries growing have been slashed down, dismembered, thrust aside to decay,
+and all because they stood in the way of a lumber-boss who thought only of getting
+his cut of spruce down to the lake. To look upon such trees, dead and shorn of their
+beauty, is to feel pity or indignation; but Nature does not share your feeling, being
+too abundant of life and resource to waste any moment in regret. Already she is upbuilding
+what man <span class="pageNum" id="pb239">[<a href="#pb239">239</a>]</span>has torn down. Glaring ax-wounds have all disappeared under bandages of living moss;
+every fallen log has hidden its loss under a mantle of lichen, soft and gray, which
+speaks not of death but of life renewed.
+</p>
+<p>Where the sun touches these prostrate giants a blush of delicate color spreads over
+them. See, it deepens as you look upon it curiously, and you examine it to find a
+multitude of “fairy-cups” on slender stems, each lifting its scarlet chalice to the
+light. Very soft and inviting seats they offer, yielding to your weight, sending up
+an odor as of crushed herbs; but do not accept the invitation. If you must halt to
+rest or to enjoy the stillness, sit not down on one of these mossy logs, but before
+it at a little distance, and let its blended colors be to your eye what the wind in
+the pine is to your ear, or the smell of hemlock to your nostrils. Then will all your
+senses delight in harmony, their natural birthright, while you rest by the way.
+</p>
+<p>Where the old road winds about the end of a ridge, avoiding every steep pitch, young
+balsams are crowding thickly into it; where it turns downward to the lowlands, quick-growing
+alders claim it as their own; and as you leave the lake far behind it begins to divide
+interminably, each branch breaking into smaller branches, like the twigs of a tree
+as you trace them outward. The <span class="pageNum" id="pb240">[<a href="#pb240">240</a>]</span>twig ends with a bud in clear space; but the farther or landward end of a logging-road
+dwindles to a deer-path, the path to a rabbit-run, and the run vanishes in some gloomy
+cedar swamp or trackless thicket where is no outlook on any side.
+</p>
+<p>It is in such places, while you puzzle over another man’s road instead of keeping
+your own trail straight, that you are most apt to get lost. Coming back you need have
+no fear of going astray, since all these trails lead to the main road, and thence
+downhill to the lake; but going forward it is well to steer clear of all branch roads,
+which lead nowhere and confuse the sense of direction.
+</p>
+<p>Leaving the road behind, therefore, and heading still eastward, you cross a ridge
+where the hardwoods stand, as their ancestors stood, untouched by the tools of men.
+Immense trunks of beech or sugar-maple or yellow birch tower upward wide apart, the
+moss of centuries upon them; far overhead is a delicate tracery of leaves, a dance
+of light against the blue, and over all is the blessed silence.
+</p>
+<p>Beyond the ridge the ground slopes downward to a uniform level. Soon the moss grows
+deeper underfoot, with a coolness that speaks of perpetual moisture. The forest becomes
+dense, almost bewildering; here a “black growth” of spruce or fir, there a tangle
+of moosewood, yonder a swale <span class="pageNum" id="pb241">[<a href="#pb241">241</a>]</span>where impenetrable alder-thickets make it impossible to hold a straight course. Because
+all this growth is useless to the lumberman, there is no cutting to be seen; but because
+I have passed this way before, instinctively following the same course like an animal,
+a faint winding trail begins to appear, with a bent twig or a blazed tree at every
+turn to give direction.
+</p>
+<p>As you move forward more confidently, learning the woodsman’s way of looking far ahead
+to pick up the guiding signs before you come to them, the dim forest suddenly brightens;
+a wave of light runs in, saying as it passes overhead that you are near an opening.
+As if to confirm the message, the trail runs into a well-worn deer-path, which looks
+as if the animals that used it knew well where they were going. Clumps of delicate
+young larches spring up ahead; between them open filmy vistas, like windows draped
+in lace, and across one vista stretches a ribbon of silver. A few more steps and—there!
+my little pond is smiling at you, reflecting the blue deeps of heaven or the white
+of passing clouds from its setting of pale-green larch-trees and crimson mosses.
+</p>
+<p>And now, if you are responsive, you shall have a new impression of this old world,
+the wonderful impression which a wilderness lake gives at the moment of discovery,
+but never again afterward. <span class="pageNum" id="pb242">[<a href="#pb242">242</a>]</span>As you emerge from cover of the woods, the pond seems to awaken like a sleeper. See,
+it returns your gaze, and on its quiet face is a look of surprise that you are here.
+Enjoy that first awakening look; for there is more of wisdom and pleasure in it, believe
+me, than in hurrying forth blindly intent on making a map or catching a trout, or
+doing something else that calls for sight to the neglect of insight. All sciences,
+including chartography and angling, can easily be learned by any man; but understanding
+is a gift of God, and it comes only to those who keep their hearts open.
+</p>
+<p>Your own nature is here your best guide, and it shows you a surprising thing: that
+your old habitual impressions of the world have suddenly become novel and strange,
+as if this smiling landscape were but just created, and you were the first to look
+with seeing eyes upon the glory of it. It tells you, further, if you listen to its
+voice, that creation is all like this, under necessity to be beautiful, and that the
+beauty is still as delightful as when the evening and the morning were the first day.
+This dance of water, this rain of light, this shimmer of air, this upspringing of
+trees, this blue heaven bending over all—no artist ever painted such things; no poet
+ever sang or could sing them. Like a mother’s infinite tenderness, they await your
+appreciation, your silence, your <span class="pageNum" id="pb243">[<a href="#pb243">243</a>]</span>love; but they hide from your description in words or pigments.
+</p>
+<p>Finally, in the lowest of whispers, your nature tells you that the most impressive
+and still most natural thing in this quiet scene is the conscious life that broods
+silently over it. As the little pond seems to awaken, to be alive and sentient, so
+also does that noble tree yonder when you view it for the first time, or that delicate
+orchid wafting its fragrance over the lonely bog. Each reflects something greater
+than itself, and it is that greater “something” which appeals to you when you enter
+the solitude. Your impressions here are those of the first man, a man who found many
+beautiful things in a garden, and God walking among them in the cool of the day. Call
+the brooding life God or the Infinite or the Unknown or the Great Spirit or the Great
+Mystery—what you will; the simple fact is that you have an impression of a living
+Being, who first speaks to you in terms of personality that you understand.
+</p>
+<p>So much, and more, of eternal understanding you may have if you but tarry a moment
+under these larches with an open mind. Then, when you have honored your first impression,
+which will abide with you always, you may trace out the physical features of my pond
+at leisure. Just here it is not very wide; your eye easily overlooks it to rest <span class="pageNum" id="pb244">[<a href="#pb244">244</a>]</span>with pleasure on a great mound of moss, colored as no garden of flowers was ever colored,
+swelling above the bog on the farther shore. On either hand the water sparkles wider
+away, disappearing around a bend with an invitation to come and see. To the left it
+ends in velvety shadow under a bank of evergreen; to the right it seems to merge into
+the level shore, where shadow melts with substance in a belt of blended colors. A
+few yards back from the shore groups of young larches lift their misty-green foliage
+above the caribou moss; they seem not to be rooted deep in the earth, but to be all
+standing on tiptoe, as if to look over the brim of my pond and see their own reflections.
+Everywhere between these larch groups are shadowy corridors; and in one of them your
+eye is caught by a spot of bright orange. The spot moves, disappears, flashes out
+again from the misty green, and a deer steps forth to complete the wilderness picture
+with the grace of life.
+</p>
+<p>Such is my pond, hidden away in the heart of a caribou bog, which is itself well hidden
+in dense forest. Before I found it the wild ducks had made it a summer home from time
+immemorial; and now, since I disturb it no more, it is possessed in peace by a family
+of beavers; yet I still think of it as mine, not by grace of any artificial law or
+deed, but by the more ancient right of possession <span class="pageNum" id="pb245">[<a href="#pb245">245</a>]</span>and enjoyment. A hundred lakes by which I have tented are greater or more splendid;
+but the first charm of any wilderness scene is its solitude, and on these greater
+lakes the impression of solitude may be broken by the flash of a paddle-blade in the
+sun, or the <i>chuck</i> of an ax under the twilight, or the gleam of a camp-fire through the darkness. But
+here on my pond you may know how Adam felt when he looked abroad: no raft has ever
+ruffled its surface; no ax-stroke or moan of smitten tree has ever disturbed its quiet;
+no camp-fire has ever gleamed on its waters. Its solitude is still that of the first
+day; and it has no name, save for the Indian word that came unbidden at the moment
+of finding it, like another Sleeping Beauty, in the woods.
+</p>
+<p>Do you ask how I came to find my pond? Not by searching, but rather by the odd chance
+of being myself lost. I had gone astray one afternoon, and was pushing through some
+black growth when an alarm rose near at hand. A deer whistled loudly, crying “<i>Heu! heu! heu!</i>” as he jumped away, and on the heels of his cry came a quacking of flushed ducks.
+</p>
+<p>Till that moment I thought I knew where I was; but the quacking brought doubt, and
+then bewilderment. If a duck tells you anything in the woods, he tells you of water,
+plenty of it; but the <span class="pageNum" id="pb246">[<a href="#pb246">246</a>]</span>map showed no body of water nearer than Big Pine Pond, which I had fished that day,
+and which should be three or four miles behind me. Turning in the direction of the
+alarm, I soon broke out of the cover upon a caribou bog, a mysterious expanse never
+before suspected in that region, and before me was the gleam of water in the sunshine.
+“A pond, a new one, and what a beauty!” I thought with elation, as I caught its awakening
+look and feasted my eyes on its glory of color. Then I gave it an Indian name and
+hurried away; for I was surely off my course, and the hour was late for lingering
+in strange woods. Somewhere to the west of me was the home lake; so westward I headed,
+making a return-compass of bent twigs, till I set my feet in a branch of the old logging-road.
+And that chance trail is the one I have ever since followed.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p246width"><img src="images/p246.png" alt="Flying mallards." width="371" height="220"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb247">[<a href="#pb247">247</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch11" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e286">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p247.png" alt="XI" width="539" height="323"></div>
+<h2 class="label">XI</h2>
+<h2 class="main">Woodsy Impressions</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Next morning I returned to explore my find at leisure. One part of that exploration
+was to go completely around the bog, to learn its guiding landmarks and compass-bearings;
+but an earlier and better part was to sit quietly beside my pond to hear whatever
+it might have to say to me. If that last sounds fanciful, remember that many things
+are voiceless in this world, but few are wholly dumb. Of the numberless ponds that
+brighten the northern wilderness, some were made by beavers, others by flood or glacier
+or earthquake, and no two of them tell the same story or make the same impression.
+They are like so <span class="pageNum" id="pb248">[<a href="#pb248">248</a>]</span>many unspoiled Indians, whom we regard from a distance as being mysteriously alike,
+but who have different traditions, ideals, personalities, and even different languages.
+</p>
+<p>I know not what the spell of any lonely place may be when you make yourself part of
+it; I only know that it stirs one strangely, like the flute note of a wood-thrush
+or a song without words. Though I never met with an adventure on my little pond, never
+cast a fly to learn whether any trout lurked in its waters, never thought of firing
+a shot at its abundant game, yet season after season I returned to it expectantly,
+and went away satisfied. Such a pond has a charm of its own, a spell which our forebears
+sought to express in terms of nymphs or <i>puckwudgies</i> or water-sprites. It grows a better crop than trout, attracts a finer game than deer
+or water-fowl, and you can seldom visit it without learning something new about your
+natural self or the wood folk or the friendly universe.
+</p>
+<p>Thus, it happens on a day when you are waiting beside your pond, or wending your way
+to it, that a moose or a fox or a dainty grouse appears unexpectedly near you; and
+instantly, without thought or motive, you “freeze” in your tracks or, if you are not
+seen, shrink deeper into the shadow for concealment. The action is natural, involuntary,
+instinctive, precisely like the action of a <span class="pageNum" id="pb249">[<a href="#pb249">249</a>]</span>young deer under similar circumstances; but when it is over you understand it, and
+smile at finding yourself becoming more and more like other natural creatures,—going
+softly, that is, making yourself inconspicuous without trying or knowing how, and
+having no thought of harm to any bird or beast, but only of watching him or gauging
+his course while remaining yourself unseen. Only by some such method can you learn
+anything worth knowing about a wild animal: books describe, naturalists classify and
+sportsmen kill him; but to understand him you must be a sharer of his quiet ways.
+</p>
+<p>Comes another day, a day when you are in love with solitude itself, when you learn
+with surprise that a man is never lonely when alone in the woods; that ideals may
+be quite as companionable as folks; and that around you in a goodly company are beauty,
+peace, spacious freedom and harmonious thoughts, with a hint also, to some minds,
+of angels and ministers of grace. The Attendant Spirit of “Comus,” the Ariel of “The
+Tempest,” the good fairies of all folk,—these are never understood in the town, nor
+in the woods unless you enter them alone.
+</p>
+<p>At a later time, and with a thrill of great wonder, you may discover the meaning of
+silence, and of the ancient myth of a lovely goddess of silence; not the dead silence
+of a dungeon, which may roar <span class="pageNum" id="pb250">[<a href="#pb250">250</a>]</span>in a man’s ears till it deafens him or drives him mad, but the exquisite living silence
+of nature, a silence which at any moment may break into an elfin ringing of bells,
+or into a faintly echoing sound of melody, as if stars or unseen beings were singing
+far away.
+</p>
+<p>This impression of melody is often real, not illusory, and may be explained by the
+impact of air-currents on resonant shells of wood, hundreds of which fall to humming
+with the voice of ’cellos and wind-harps; but there is another experience of the solitude,
+more subtle but none the less real, for which only the psychologist will venture to
+give an accounting. Once in a season, perhaps, comes an hour when, no matter what
+your plans or desires may be, your mind seems intent on some unrelated affair of its
+own. As you hurry over the trail, you may be thinking of catching a trout or stalking
+a buck or building a camp or getting to windward of a corporation; meanwhile your
+subconscious mind, disdaining your will or your worry, is busily making pictures of
+whatever attractive thing it sees,—radiant little pictures, sunshiny or wind-swept,
+which shall be reproduced for your pleasure long after the important matters which
+then occupied you are clean forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>Here is the story of one such picture, a reflection, no doubt, of the primitive trait
+or quality called <span class="pageNum" id="pb251">[<a href="#pb251">251</a>]</span>place-memory, which enables certain animals or savages to recognize any spot on which
+their eyes have once rested.
+</p>
+<p>One late afternoon, years after I had found my pond, I crossed the mountain from distant
+Ragged Lake, heading for the home lake by a new route. There was no trail; but near
+the foot of the western slope of the hills I picked up an old lumber road which seemed
+to lead in the right direction. For a time all went well, and confidently; but when
+the road dipped into an immense hollow, and there showed signs of petering out, I
+followed it with increasing doubt, not knowing where I might come out of the woods
+or be forced to spend the night. As I circled through a swale, having left the road
+to avoid a press of alders that filled it, an ash-tree lifted its glossy head above
+a thicket with a cheery “Well met again, pilgrim! Whither away now?”
+</p>
+<p>It was a surprising hail in that wild place, suggestive of dreams or sleep-walking;
+but under the illusion was a grain of reality which brought me to an instant halt.
+After passing under thousands of silent trees all day, suddenly here was one speaking
+to me. And not only that, but wearing a familiar look, like a face which smiles its
+recognition of you while you try in vain to place it. Where, when had I seen that
+tree before? No, <span class="pageNum" id="pb252">[<a href="#pb252">252</a>]</span>impossible! I had never before entered this part of the vast forest. Yet I must have
+seen it somewhere, or it could not now stir a familiar memory. Nonsense! just a trick
+of the imagination. I must hurry on. Thus my thoughts ran, like a circling hare; and
+all the while the ash-tree seemed to be smiling at my perplexity.
+</p>
+<p>The man who ignores such a hint has much to learn about woodcraft, which is largely
+a subconscious art; so I sat down to smoke a council-pipe with myself and the ash-tree
+over the matter. No sooner was the mind left to its own unhampered way than it began
+to piece bits of a puzzle-picture deftly together; and when the picture was complete
+I knew exactly where I was, and where I might quickly find a familiar trail. Eight
+years before, in an idle hour when nothing stirred on my pond, I had explored a mile
+or so beyond the bog to the south, only to find a swampy, desolate country without
+a trail or conspicuous landmark of any kind. It was while I passed through this waste,
+seeking nothing in particular and returning to my pond, that the mind took its snapshot
+of a certain tree, and preserved the picture so carefully, so minutely, that years
+later the original was instantly recognized. Many similar ash-trees grew on that flat,
+each with its glossy crown and its gray shaft flecked by dark-green moss; what <span class="pageNum" id="pb253">[<a href="#pb253">253</a>]</span>there was in this one to attract me, what outward grace or inward tree-sprite, I have
+not yet found out.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p252width" id="p252"><img src="images/p252.jpg" alt="His massive head thrust forward as he tried to penetrate the far distance with his near-sighted eyes." width="495" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>His massive head thrust forward as he tried to penetrate the far distance with his
+near-sighted eyes.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb253a">[<a href="#pb253a">253</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Another subconscious record seems to have been made for beauty alone, with its consequent
+pleasure, rather than for utility. As I watched my pond one summer morning, intent
+on learning what attracted so many deer to its shores, the mind apparently chose its
+own moment for making a perfect picture, a masterpiece, which should hang in its woodsy
+frame on my mental wall forever. The sky was wondrously clear, the water dancing,
+the air laden with the fragrance of peat and sweet-scented grass. Deer were slow in
+coming that morning, and meanwhile nothing of consequence stirred on my pond; but
+there was still abundant satisfaction in the brilliant dragon-flies that balanced
+on bending reeds, or in the brood of wild ducks that came bobbing out like young mischief—makers
+from a hidden bogan, or even in the face of the pond itself, as it brightened under
+a gleam of sunshine or frowned at a passing cloud or broke into a laugh at the touch
+of a cat’s-paw wind. Suddenly all these pleasant minor matters were brushed aside
+when a bush quivered and held still on the farther shore.
+</p>
+<p>All morning the bushes had been quivering, showing the silvery side of their leaves
+to every <span class="pageNum" id="pb254">[<a href="#pb254">254</a>]</span>breeze; but now their motion spoke of life, and spoke truly, for out from under the
+smitten bilberries came a bear to stand alert in the open. The fore part of his body
+was lifted up as he planted his paws on a tussock; his massive head was thrust forward
+as he tried to penetrate the far distance with his near-sighted eyes. He was not suspicious,
+not a bit; his nose held steady as a pointing dog’s, instead of rocking up and down,
+as it does when a bear tries to steal a message from the air. A moment he poised there,
+a statue of ebony against the crimson moss; then he leaped a bogan with surprising
+agility, and came at his easy, shuffling gait around a bend of the shore. Opposite
+me he sat down to cock his nose at the sky, twisting his head as he followed the motion
+of something above him, which I could not see,—a hornet, perhaps, or a troublesome
+fly that persisted in buzzing about his ears. Twice he struck quickly with a paw,
+apparently missing the lively thing overhead; for he jumped up, rushed ahead violently
+and spun around on the pivot of his toes. Then he settled soberly to his flat-footed
+shuffle once more, and disappeared in a clump of larches, which seemed to open a door
+for him as he drew near.
+</p>
+<p>For me that little comedy was never repeated, though I saw many another on dark days
+or bright; <span class="pageNum" id="pb255">[<a href="#pb255">255</a>]</span>and the last time I visited my pond I beheld it sadly altered, its beauty vanished,
+its shores flooded, its green trees stark and dead. Unknown to me, however, the mind
+had made its photographic record, and always I see my pond, as on that perfect day,
+in its setting of misty-green larches and crimson bog. Again its quiet face changes,
+like a human face at pleasant thoughts, and over it comes to me the odor of sweet-scented
+grass. The sunshine brightens it; the clouds shadow it; brilliant dragon-flies play
+among its bending reeds; the same brood of ducklings glides in or out from bogan to
+grassy bogan; and forever the bear, big and glossy black, goes shuffling along the
+farther shore.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p255width"><img src="images/p255.png" alt="Sitting bear." width="180" height="322"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb256">[<a href="#pb256">256</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch12" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e296">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p256.png" alt="XII" width="555" height="332"></div>
+<h2 class="label">XII</h2>
+<h2 class="main">Larch-trees and Deer</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">One of the subtler charms of my pond, a thing felt rather than seen, was a certain
+air of secrecy which seldom left it. In every wilderness lake lurks a mystery of some
+kind, which you cannot hope to penetrate,—a sense of measureless years, of primal
+far-off things, of uncouth creatures dead and gone that haunted its banks before the
+infancy of man; but on this little pond, with its sunny waters and open shore, the
+mystery was always pleasant, and at times provoking, as if it might be the place where
+an end of the rainbow rested.
+</p>
+<p>Though small enough to give one a sense of possession (one can never feel that he
+owns a big <span class="pageNum" id="pb257">[<a href="#pb257">257</a>]</span>lake, or anything else which gives an impression of grandeur or sublimity), my pond
+had a mischievous way of hinting, when you were most comfortable, that it was hiding
+a secret; that it might show you, if it would, a much better scene than that you looked
+upon. It was shaped somewhat like an immense pair of spectacles, having two lobes
+that were flashing bright, with a narrow band of darker water between; and, what with
+its bending shores or intervening larches, you could never see the whole of it from
+any one place. So, like eyes that hide their subtlest lights of whim or fancy under
+glasses, it often seemed to be holding something in reserve, something which it would
+not reveal unless you searched for it. After watching awhile from one beautiful or
+restful spot, you began to feel or imagine that some comedy was passing unseen on
+the other half of the pond; and though you resisted the feeling at first, sooner or
+later you crept through the screen of larches to know if it were true.
+</p>
+<p>On every side of the pond save one, where a bank of evergreen made velvet shadows
+intermingled with spots of heavenly blue, the shores were thickly spread with mosses,
+which began to color gloriously in midsummer, the colors deepening as the season waned,
+till the reflecting water appeared as the glimmering center of a gorgeous <span class="pageNum" id="pb258">[<a href="#pb258">258</a>]</span>Oriental rug. Along the edges of this rug, as a ragged fringe, stood groups of larches
+in irregular order,—little fairylike larches that bore their crown of leaves not as
+other trees bear them, heavily, but as a floating mist or nebula of sage green. Like
+New England ladies of a past age they seemed, each wearing a precious lace shawl which
+gave an air of daintiness to their sterling worth. When the time came for the leaves
+to fall, instead of rustling down to earth with a sound of winter, mournfully, they
+would scamper away on a merry wind, mingling their fragrance with that of the ripened
+grass; and then the twigs appeared plainly for the first time, with a little knot
+or twist in every twig, like toil-worn fingers that the lace had concealed.
+</p>
+<p>Here or there amid this delicate new growth towered the ruin of a mighty tamarack,
+or ship-knee larch, such as men sought in the old clipper-ship days when they needed
+timbers lighter than oak, and even tougher to resist the pressure of the gale or the
+waves’ buffeting. Once, before the shipmen penetrated thus far into the wilderness,
+the tamaracks stood here in noble array, their heads under clouds, beckoning hungry
+caribou to feed from the lichens that streamed from their broad arms above the drifted
+snow; now most of them are under the moss, which covered them <span class="pageNum" id="pb259">[<a href="#pb259">259</a>]</span>tenderly when they fell. The few remaining ones stand as watch-towers for the hawks
+and eagles; their broken branches make strange sepia drawings of dragon-knots and
+hooked beaks on the blue sky. A tiny moth killed all these great larches; the caribou
+moved northward, leaving the country, and the deer moved in to take possession.
+</p>
+<p>This and many other stories of the past my little pond told me, as I watched from
+its shores or followed the game-trails that were spread like a net about its edges.
+Back in the woods these trails wandered about in devious fashion, seeking good browse
+or easy traveling; while here or there a faint outgoing branch offered to lead you,
+if your eyes were keen, to the distant ridge where a big buck had his daily loafing-place.
+On the bog the trails went more circumspectly, uniting at certain places in a single
+deep path, a veritable path of ages, which was the only path that might safely be
+followed by any creature with more weight than a fox. The moment you ventured away
+from it the ground began to shiver, to quake alarmingly, to sink down beneath your
+feet. Only a thin mat of roots kept you afloat; the roots might anywhere part and
+drop you into black bottomless ooze, and close forever over your head. A queer place,
+one might think, for heavy beasts to gather, and so it was; but the old caribou-trails
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb260">[<a href="#pb260">260</a>]</span>or new deer-paths offered every one of them safe footing.
+</p>
+<p>At first these game-trails puzzled me completely, being so many and so pointless.
+That they were in constant use was evident from the footprints in them, which were
+renewed almost every morning; yet I never once saw a deer approach the water to drink
+or feed. Something else attracted them; a highway from one feeding-ground to another,
+it might be, or the wider outlook which brings deer and caribou out of their dim woods
+to sightly places; but there was no certainty in the matter until the animals themselves
+revealed the secret. One day, when a young buck passed my hiding-place as if he were
+going somewhere, I followed him to the upper or southern end of the pond. There he
+joined four other deer, which were very busy about a certain spot, half hidden by
+low bushes, a couple of hundred yards back from the shore. And there they stayed,
+apparently eating or drinking, for a full half-hour or more.
+</p>
+<p>When the deer were gone away, I went over and found a huge spring, to which converged
+a dozen deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel it seemed: the radiating paths
+were the spokes, and somewhere beyond the horizon was the unseen rim. From the depths
+of the spring came a surprising <span class="pageNum" id="pb261">[<a href="#pb261">261</a>]</span>volume of clear, coffee-colored water, bubbling over joyously as it leaped from the
+dark earth into the light, and then stealing quietly away under bending grasses to
+keep my pond brim full. Around the spring the earth was pitted by the feet of deer,
+and everywhere about its edges were holes lapped in the peat by eager tongues. Here,
+beyond a doubt, was what called so many animals to my pond,—a mineral spring or salt-lick,
+such as we read about in stories of pioneer days, when game was everywhere abundant,
+but such as one now rarely finds.
+</p>
+<p>After that happy discovery I shifted my blind to another larch with low-drooping branches,
+beneath which one might rest comfortably and look out through a screen of lace upon
+a gathering of the deer. They are creatures of habit as well as of freedom; and one
+of their habits is to rest at regular intervals, the hours being hard to forecast,
+since they vary not only with the season of lengthening or shortening days, but also
+each month with the changes of the moon. Thus, when the moon fulls and weather is
+clear, deer are abroad most of the night. At dawn they seek their day-beds, instinctively
+removing far from where they have left their scent in feeding; and during the day
+they are apt to remain hidden save for one brief hour, when they take a comforting
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb262">[<a href="#pb262">262</a>]</span>bite here or there, giving the impression that they eat now from habit rather than
+from hunger. As the moon wanes they change their hours to take advantage of its shining;
+and on the “dark of the moon” they browse only in the early part of the night, then
+rest many hours, and have two periods of feeding or roaming the next day.
+</p>
+<p>Such seems to be the rule in the North, with plenty of exceptions to keep one guessing,—as
+in the November mating-season, when bucks are afoot at all hours; or during a severe
+storm, which keeps deer and all other wild animals close in their coverts.
+</p>
+<p>Because of this regularity of habit at irregular hours, the only certainty about the
+salt-lick was that the animals would come if one waited long enough. As I watched
+expectantly from my larch bower, the morning shadows might creep up to me, halt, and
+lengthen away on the other side, while not a deer showed himself in the open. Then
+there would be a stir in the distant larches, a flash of bright color; a doe would
+emerge from one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps as she neared the
+spring. As my eyes followed her, noting with pleasure her graceful poses, her unwearied
+alertness, her frequent turning of the head to one distant spot in the woods where
+she had left her fawn, there would come another <span class="pageNum" id="pb263">[<a href="#pb263">263</a>]</span>flash of color from another trail, then two or three in a flecking of light and shadow,
+till half a dozen or more deer were gathered at the lick, some lapping the mud eagerly,
+others sipping, sipping, as if they could never have enough of the water. After a
+time they would slip away as they had come, singly or in groups; the spring would
+be deserted, and one could never tell how many hours or days might pass before another
+company began to gather.
+</p>
+<p>However eager for salt they might be, the deer came or went in that mysteriously silent
+way of theirs, appearing without warning in one trail, or vanishing down another without
+a sound to mark their passing. Now and then, however, especially if one watched at
+the exquisite twilight hour, a very different entrance might be staged on the lonely
+bog,—a gay, prancing “here I come: get out of the way” kind of entrance, which made
+one glad he had stayed to witness it. On the slope of the nearest ridge your eye would
+catch an abrupt motion, the upward surge of a bough or the spring-back of a smitten
+bush; presently to your ears would come a rapid thudding of earth, or a <i>sqush, sqush, sqush</i> of water; the larches would burst open and a buck leap forth, flourishing broad antlers
+or kicking up mad heels as he went gamboling down the game-trail. If <span class="pageNum" id="pb264">[<a href="#pb264">264</a>]</span>other deer were at the spring, they would throw up their heads, set their ears at
+the dancing buck, take a last quick sip from the spring, and move aside as he jumped
+in to muzzle the mud as if famished. For it was the mud rather than the water which
+first claimed his attention, no doubt because it held more of the magic salt. He often
+gave the impression, as he approached in high feather, that he had been tasting the
+stuff in anticipation and could hardly wait to get his tongue into it.
+</p>
+<p>The first time I saw that frisky performance I went over to taste the mud for myself,
+but found little to distinguish it from the mud of any other peat-bog. The water from
+the spring was wholesome, with a faint taste of something I could not name; and I
+drank it repeatedly without learning its secret. That it held a charm of some kind,
+which chemistry might reveal, was evident from the fact that deer came from miles
+around to enjoy its flavor. Some of the trails could be traced clear across the bog
+to distant ridges and a broken country beyond; and in following these trails, to learn
+what creatures used them and where they came from, I repeatedly came upon a deer asleep
+in his day-bed. Whether the animals couched here before drinking at the spring, or
+after drinking, or “just by happentry” I could not tell.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb265">[<a href="#pb265">265</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Once the sleeper was a buck with noble antlers. He was resting beside a great log
+on the edge of an opening, half surrounded by dense fir thickets. I speak of him as
+asleep; but that is mere habit of speech or poverty of language. Of a score of wild
+birds or beasts that I have found “asleep” in the woods, not one seemed to lose touch
+with the waking world even for an instant. The buck’s eyelids were blinking, his head
+nodding heavily; yet all the while his feet were curled in readiness for an instant
+jump; and somehow those expressive feet gave the impression of being as wide awake
+as a squirrel. Occasionally as I watched him, fascinated by the rare sight, his head
+would drop almost to the ground, only to be jerked up with an air of immense surprise;
+then the sleepy fellow would stare in a filmy, unseeing, “who said I was asleep” kind
+of way at a little tree that stood in the opening. The stare would end with a slow
+closing of the eyelids, and in a moment he would be nodding again.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p265width"><img src="images/p265.png" alt="Grazing buck." width="278" height="201"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb266">[<a href="#pb266">266</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch13" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e306">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p266.png" alt="XIII" width="536" height="336"></div>
+<h2 class="label">XIII</h2>
+<h2 class="main">Black Mallards</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Next to the deer, the wild ducks were the chief attraction of my pond. Indeed, they
+might well be placed first, since they were always at home there, and much of the
+time engaged in one or another of the little comedies that make ducks the most amusing
+of all birds. Eight summers in succession, and again after an interval of two years,
+I found my pond occupied by a pair of black mallards with their brood; and I fancied,
+since migratory birds return to the place of their birth, and their nestlings after
+them, that one of the pair was the lineal descendant of ducks that had held the place
+in undisputed possession for tens of thousands of years. Here was a succession, <span class="pageNum" id="pb267">[<a href="#pb267">267</a>]</span>modest like all true nobility, which made the proud family trees of <i>Mayflower</i> folk or English kings or Norman barons look like young berry-bushes in the shade
+of a towering pine.
+</p>
+<p>Until late midsummer the family had the pond all to themselves. Never a stranger-duck
+appeared to share or challenge their heritage; while day after day the mother watched
+over the little brood as they fed or played or learned the wild-duck signals. Like
+our dogs, every manner of beast or bird has its own tribal ways or customs, some of
+which do not appear in the young until they begin to roam abroad or to mingle with
+their kind. So, as I watched the brood emerge from down to pin-feathers, there would
+come a red-letter day when two of them, meeting as they rounded a grassy point, would
+raise their wings as if in salutation; and a later day when, the pin-feathers having
+grown to fair plumage, their young cheepings or whistlings would change to a decided
+<i>quack</i>.
+</p>
+<p>Thereafter their talk was endlessly entertaining, if one took the trouble to creep
+near enough to appreciate its modulations, expressive of every emotion between drowsiness
+and tense alarm; for it cannot be heard, except as a meaningless sound, beyond a few
+yards. The little hen-ducks got on famously, having the mother’s quacking as a <span class="pageNum" id="pb268">[<a href="#pb268">268</a>]</span>model; but male ducks cannot or will not learn to quack, and since a male voice was
+rarely heard on the pond at this season, each little drake was a law unto himself,
+and made a brave show of his liberty. Climbing on a tussock, as if for more room,
+he would stretch his wings, make odd motions with his neck, and finally pump out a
+funny <i>wheekle, wheekle</i>, as if he had swallowed a whistle.
+</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the old drake and father of the family was seldom about; only two or three
+times did I see him enter the pond, stay a brief while, and then wing away over the
+tree-tops in the direction of a larger lake, some three miles to the eastward. On
+that lake there was never a brood of young ducks, so far as I could learn; but when
+trout-fishing there I often surprised the drake, at times taking precious care of
+his own skin in solitude, again clubbing sociably with three or four other drakes,
+who had run away each from a family and the cares thereof on some other lonely pond.
+</p>
+<p>As the summer waned, a new sound of quacking, joyous and exultant, would greet me
+when I drew near my pond. Creeping to my blind under the larches, I would find a second
+brood making merry acquaintance with the family I had watched over; then a third and
+a fourth company of strangers, as young ducks of all that region began <span class="pageNum" id="pb269">[<a href="#pb269">269</a>]</span>to traffic about in preparation for the autumn flight. A little later the flocks fairly
+reveled in sociability, gathering here or there with increasing numbers, till on a
+late-September day I might find my pond deserted, the owners being on a visit elsewhere,
+or I might catch breath at sight of so many ducks that I could not accurately count
+them or distinguish one brood from another.
+</p>
+<p>At such a time my little pond seemed to awaken, to shed its silence like a garment,
+to put on its most animated expression, as at a happy festival or family reunion.
+The air was never still from the gabble of meeting groups (probably all more or less
+related), or from the resounding <i>quank, quank, quank</i> of some old gossip who went about proclaiming her opinion to the whole company. Everywhere
+the still water was broken into undulating wakes as the drakes swept grandly over
+it, with that rhythmic, forward-and-back motion of their heads which is like duck
+poetry,—a motion that is not seen when the birds are feeding, but only when they are
+well satisfied with themselves or their audience. Through the shadows under the bank
+glided knots or ribbons of young birds which had not yet quite satisfied their appetites,
+some exploring every crevice for ripened seeds, others tip-tilting their tails to
+the blue sky as they probed the bottom for water-bugs and other titbits. <span class="pageNum" id="pb270">[<a href="#pb270">270</a>]</span>In an open space a solitary hen-duck bobbed and teetered ecstatically, dipping the
+fore part of her body under, then heaving it up quickly so as to send the cleansing
+water in a foamy wave over her back and wings. Here or there on a tussock stood a
+quiet group of the splendid birds, oiling their glossy feathers, setting a wing-cover
+just right, or adding some other last touch to an elaborate toilet before settling
+down for a nap.
+</p>
+<p>The glassy water reflected every form, color, motion of these untroubled ducks as
+in a glass, doubling the graceful effect. Around them stretched the gloriously colored
+bog; and beyond the bog were the nebulous-green larches, the somber black growth and
+the lifting hills, on which autumn had laid its golden touch. Truly a beautiful sight,
+a sight to make the heart of hunter or naturalist tremble with expectancy as he fingered
+his gun. I have known that trembling, that expectancy; but there was greater pleasure,
+perhaps greater freedom also, in leaving the happy comedy undisturbed.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p270width" id="p270"><img src="images/p270.jpg" alt="At such a time my pond seemed to awaken and shed its silence like a garment." width="493" height="720"><p class="figureHead"><i>At such a time my pond seemed to awaken and shed its silence like a garment.</i></p>
+</div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb270a">[<a href="#pb270a">270</a>]</span></p>
+<p>Because of its solitude, its utter wildness, my pond seemed to be the chosen resting-place
+of the flocks on an autumn day (they feed or travel mostly by night), and perhaps
+for the same reason the ducks that frequented it were among the wildest creatures
+I have ever tried to stalk. A <span class="pageNum" id="pb271">[<a href="#pb271">271</a>]</span>black mallard is not an easy bird to outwit at any time or place; but here some magic
+mirror or sounding-board seemed to supplement his natural eyes or ears. The slightest
+unnatural voice or appearance, the snap of a twig or the quiver of a leaf or the glimpse
+of a face in the larches, would send a flock away on the instant; and sometimes, when
+I was sure no sound or motion of mine had broken the perfect quiet, they would take
+wing in such incomprehensible fashion as to leave me wondering what extra sense had
+warned them of danger.
+</p>
+<p>Several times in the course of a summer, when I wanted to observe the little duck
+family more nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer play that I could not understand
+from a distance, I would creep out of the larches unseen, worming my way along a sunken
+deer-path, and stopping whenever heads were turned in my direction. One might think
+it an easy matter to approach any game by such methods; yet almost invariably, before
+I could be safe behind a bush or a tuft of grass at the water’s edge, the old mother-duck
+would become uneasy, like a deer that catches a vague hint of you floating far down
+the wind. That she could not see or hear me was certain; that she could not smell
+me I had repeatedly proved; nevertheless, after searching the <span class="pageNum" id="pb272">[<a href="#pb272">272</a>]</span>shores narrowly she would stretch her neck straight up from the water, as if attentive
+to some wireless message in the air.
+</p>
+<p>A wild duck does not take that alert attitude unless she is suspicious; and a curious
+thing was, that though the mother was silent, uttering never a word, the young would
+crouch and remain motionless wherever they happened to be. Suddenly, as if certain
+of danger but unable to locate it, the mother would spring aloft to go sweeping in
+wide circles over the bog. She seemed to know it by heart, every pool and bump and
+shadow of it; and when her keen eyes picked up an unfamiliar shadow on a certain deer-path
+she would come at it with a rush, whirling over it in an upward-climbing spiral till
+she became sure of me, as of something out of place, when she would speed away with
+a warning note over the tree-tops. If the young were strong of wing, they would follow
+her swiftly, giving wide berth to the deer-path as if she had told them beware of
+it; but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air, they would skulk away, their
+heads down close to the water, and hide in one of the grassy bogans of the pond, where
+because of the quaking shore it was impossible to come near them.
+</p>
+<p>Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited till the ducklings had been some
+minutes hidden <span class="pageNum" id="pb273">[<a href="#pb273">273</a>]</span>before creeping back to my blind in the larches. An hour or more passed in the timeless
+quiet; while the water became as glass under the afternoon sun, and a deer moved near
+the hidden brood without flushing them or even bringing a head up where I could see
+it. Then the mother returned, calling as she came; and the first thing she did was
+to circle warily over the same deer-path, stretching her neck down for a close inspection.
+“Aha! that thing is gone, but where?” she said in every line and motion of her inquisitive
+head or pulsating wings, as she sped away to find the answer.
+</p>
+<p>Twice she circled the bog, her eyes searching every cranny and shadow of it. From
+her high flight she slanted straight down and pitched fair in the middle of the pond,
+where for some moments she sat motionless, her head up, looking, listening,—a perfect
+image of alertness in the midst of wildness. Satisfied at last that no trouble was
+near, she turned to the shore with a low call; and out of the bogan pell-mell rushed
+the little ones, splashing, cheeping, half lifting themselves with their tiny wings
+as they scurried over the water to join the mother. For a full hour I had kept my
+glasses almost continuously on that bogan; then with divided attention I cast expectant
+glances at it when I heard the mother’s incoming note, the <span class="pageNum" id="pb274">[<a href="#pb274">274</a>]</span>whish of her wings as she circled the bog and the splash as she took the water; but
+not till the right signal came did I see a motion or a sign of life from the hidden
+brood.
+</p>
+<p>The pond was shaped, as we have noticed, like a pair of spectacles; and a favorite
+place for the autumn flock to rest or preen or sleep was at the bend between the two
+lobes. Down into that bend ran a screen of alder-bushes, the only good cover between
+woods and water on the entire pond; and it was so dense that a cat could hardly have
+crept through it without making a disturbance. That was one reason, I suppose, why
+the ducks felt safe at the outer end of the tangle: they could see everything in front
+or on either side, and hear anything that moved behind them.
+</p>
+<p>One day, when the shore at this bend was freshly starred by ducks’ feet and littered
+with feathers, showing that a large flock had just left the roost, I began at the
+fringe of larches and cut a passageway, a regular beaver’s tunnel, down the whole
+length of the alder run, making an end in a point of grass, where the water came close
+on three sides. One had to consider only the birds’ keen ears, the alder screen being
+so thick that not even a duck’s eye could penetrate it; therefore I smoothed the way
+most carefully, leaving no stick below to crack under my weight, and no <span class="pageNum" id="pb275">[<a href="#pb275">275</a>]</span>branch reaching down to rustle or quiver as I crawled beneath it. When the tunnel
+was well finished I left the pond to its solitude a few days, thinking that the birds
+would surely notice some telltale sign of my work, some fresh-cut stick or wilted
+bough that my eyes had overlooked, and be wary of the alders for a little time.
+</p>
+<p>And why such pains to get near a bird, you ask, since one might better observe or
+shoot him from a comfortable distance? Oh, just a notion of mine, an odd notion, which
+can hardly be appreciated till one has proved it in the open. As you can seldom “feel”
+the quality of a stranger while he remains even a few yards away, so with any wild
+bird or beast: there is an impression arising from nearness, from contact, which cannot
+be had in any other way; and that swift impression, which is both physical and mental,
+a judgment as it were of the entire nature, is often more illuminating than hours
+of ordinary observation or speculation.
+</p>
+<p>Such an impression is not new or strange, or even modernly psychological. On the contrary,
+it is the simplest matter in the world of sense, I think, and perhaps also the surest.
+Most animals have a significant way of touching their noses to one of their own kind
+at meeting; not to smell him, as we imagine (they can smell him, or even <span class="pageNum" id="pb276">[<a href="#pb276">276</a>]</span>his tracks, at a distance), but in order to receive a more intimate or convincing
+message than the sense of smell can furnish. Likewise, a man naturally pats the head
+of a dog, or fingers an object after minutely scanning it with his eyes; and in this
+instinctive action is the ancient touch of recognition. Touch is the oldest and most
+universal of the bodily senses, sight, smell, taste and hearing being later specializations
+thereof; by it the living creature first became aware of a world outside of self;
+and to it we all return for verification of our sense impressions. Therefore it happens
+most naturally that, despite warning signs or penalties, thoughtless men will put
+their hands into the bear or monkey cage, where animals are no longer natural or to
+be trusted, and our children must be forever lectured, or sometimes spanked, for handling
+things which they have been told to let alone.
+</p>
+<p>Besides, when one is very near a strange bird or beast, one becomes vaguely conscious
+of an extra sense at work,—that real but uncatalogued sense-of-presence (to coin a
+name for it) which makes two persons in a room aware of each other at every instant,
+even while both are absorbed in quiet work or reading. The “feel” of the same room
+when one occupies it alone is very different; and the difference may help to explain
+why gregarious <span class="pageNum" id="pb277">[<a href="#pb277">277</a>]</span>animals are uncomfortable, uneasy, unless they are near their own kind,—near enough,
+that is, not simply to hear or see them but to feel their bodily presence. A herd-animal
+is always restless, and often sickens, if his herd is not close about him. The same
+mysterious sense (mysterious to us, because we do not yet know the organ through which
+it works) often warns the solitary man in the woods or in the darkness that some living
+creature is near him, at a moment when his eyes or ears are powerless to verify his
+impression.
+</p>
+<p>But that is another and more subtle matter, familiar enough to a few sensitive persons
+and natural woodsmen, but impossible of demonstration to others; you cannot explain
+color to a man born blind. The simple answer is, that for my own satisfaction I wanted
+to touch one of the wary birds of my pond, as I had before touched eagle and crow,
+bear and deer, and many another wild creature in his native woods. Such was the notion.
+In other places I had several times tried to indulge it; but save in one instance,
+when I found a winter flock weakened by hunger, I had never laid my hand fairly on
+a black mallard when he had the free use of his wits and wings.
+</p>
+<p>When I returned to my pond, and from a distance swept my glasses over it, the water
+was alive with ducks; never before had I seen so many <span class="pageNum" id="pb278">[<a href="#pb278">278</a>]</span>there at one time. Single large birds, the drakes undoubtedly, were moving leisurely
+over the open spaces. Groups of five or six, each a brood from some neighboring pond,
+were gliding in an exploring kind of way under the banks or through the weed-beds;
+and scattered along the shore at the end of the alder run were wisps or companies
+of the birds, all preening or dozing with an air of complete security. Here at last
+was my chance, my perfect chance, I told myself, as I carefully marked one brood standing
+at the tip of the grassy point where my tunnel ended.
+</p>
+<p>More carefully than ever I stalked a bear, I circled through the black growth, crept
+under the fringe of larches, and entered the alder run unobserved. Inch by inch I
+wormed along the secret passageway, flat to the ground, not once raising my head,
+hardly daring to pull a full breath, till, just as I emerged from the alder shade
+into the grass, a gamy scent in my nose and a low gabble in my ears told me that I
+was almost near enough, that the birds were all around me, and that for the rest of
+the way I must move as a shadow.
+</p>
+<p>From under my hat-brim I located the gabblers, a large family of black mallards outside
+the fringe of grass on my left. They were abreast of me, not more than five or six
+feet away. I had not marked these birds when I began my stalk; they <span class="pageNum" id="pb279">[<a href="#pb279">279</a>]</span>were hidden in a tiny cove or bend of the shore, and had it not been for their voices
+I would surely have crept past without seeing them. At the mouth of the cove was a
+single tussock, on which stood the mother-duck, wavering between dreams and watchfulness
+as the sunshine poured full upon her, making her very sleepy. On the bare earth beneath
+her the others were getting ready for a nap, so near that I could see every motion,
+the settling of a head, the blink of an eyelid. Occasionally through the tangle of
+grass stems came the penetrating gleam of their eyes,—marvelously bright eyes, alert
+and intelligent.
+</p>
+<p>For several minutes I held motionless, still flat to the ground, listening to the
+sleepy talk, admiring the mottled-brown plumage of a breast or the bar of brilliant
+color drawn athwart a sooty wing. All the while my nose was trying to get in a warning
+word, telling me to give heed that the ducky odor which flowed in waves over the whole
+point was different from this strong reek, as of a disturbed nest, in the near-by
+grass; but my eyes were so occupied that I paid no attention to other senses. As the
+duck on the tussock at last settled down to sleep and I worked my toes into the earth
+for a noiseless push forward, there was a slight but startling motion almost at my
+shoulder. A neck was raised and twisted sleepily, as if to get <span class="pageNum" id="pb280">[<a href="#pb280">280</a>]</span>the kink out of it; and the thrill of success ran over me as I made out another and
+nearer group of ducks. They were under the bank and the bending grass, where I had
+completely overlooked them. Every one was within reach; and every one I could see
+had his head drawn in or tucked away under his wing.
+</p>
+<p>Slowly my left hand stole toward them, creeping forward in the deliberate fashion
+of a measuring-worm, first the fingers stretched, then the knuckles raised, then out
+with the fingers again. It would have been very easy to stroke or to catch one of
+the birds by a swift motion; but that was not what I wanted, and would have instantly
+spoiled the whole comedy. For the right effect, the hand must rest upon a duck before
+he was aware of it, so quietly that at first he would give his attention to the hand
+itself, not to the thing it came from. Then he would probably give it a questioning
+peck, examine it curiously, and finally grow indifferent to it, as other birds had
+done when I touched them from hiding. But here my head was too close to the ground,
+and my body too cramped for easy action. As my hand reached the edge of the bank,
+just over an unconscious duck, it ran into a tuft of saw-grass, which cut my fingers
+and rustled dangerously. To clear this obstruction I drew back slightly, lifted up
+a grain; and <span class="pageNum" id="pb281">[<a href="#pb281">281</a>]</span>in my other ear, which was turned away, a resonant voice cried <i>Quock!</i> with a challenge that broke the tension like a pistol-shot.
+</p>
+<p>Involuntarily I turned my head, just when I should have held most still; and so I
+lost my chance. There, at arm’s-length on the other side of the point, a wild-eyed
+duck was looking over the bank, her neck stretched like a taut string, her olive-colored
+bill pointing straight at me. She never said another word, and had no need to repeat
+her challenge. All over the point and along the shore necks were stretched up from
+the grass; a dozen alert forms rose like sentinels from as many tussocks, and forty
+pairs of keen eyes were every one searching the spot at which the old hen-duck pointed
+her accusation.
+</p>
+<p>For a small moment that tableau lasted, without a sound, without a motion; while one
+was conscious only of the tense necks, the pointing bills, the gleaming little eyes,
+each with its diamond-point of light; and then the old duck took wing. She did not
+even crouch to jump, so far as I could follow her motion; she simply went into the
+air like a rocket, shooting aloft as if hurled from a spring. As she rose, there was
+an answering rush of wings, <i>whoosh!</i> in my very ears, a surge as of smitten water in the distance; and in the same fraction
+of an instant every duck to <span class="pageNum" id="pb282">[<a href="#pb282">282</a>]</span>the farthest ends of the pond was up and away in a wild tumult of quacking.
+</p>
+<p>Only one of these birds had seen me, and that one probably had no notion of what she
+had glimpsed in the grass. It was a round thing with eyes, and it moved a second time—that
+was enough for the old hen-duck, and the others did not stop to ask any questions.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p282width"><img src="images/p282.png" alt="Mallard with ducklings." width="352" height="368"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb283">[<a href="#pb283">283</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch14" class="div1 chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e316">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p283.png" alt="XIV" width="550" height="334"></div>
+<h2 class="label">XIV</h2>
+<h2 class="main">Memories</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Two full years passed before I returned to my pond on a sunny September day, in my
+mind’s eye seeing it smile a welcome, hearing it cry, “Lo here! Lo there!” and planning,
+as I came down the silent trail, how I would accept all its invitations. First, the
+salt-lick must be spied out from a distance; and the examination would tell me whether
+to keep on down my own trail or, if the lick were occupied, to branch off by a certain
+game-path, which would lead me to the blind where I had so often watched the deer
+unseen. Next, I would have a restful look at a mound of moss swelling above the bog
+near a certain tamarack, which always showed the first <span class="pageNum" id="pb284">[<a href="#pb284">284</a>]</span>blush of crimson in midsummer, and which became in autumn like a gorgeous bed of Dutch
+tulips, only more wondrously colored. Then I would look into the doorway under the
+larches, where my bear had disappeared. I always picked that out from a hundred similar
+doorways to watch or question it a moment, as if at any time the green curtain might
+open to let the bear out. For a curious thing about all woodsmen is this: if they
+see a buck or a bear or even a fox enter a certain place, they must forever afterward
+stop to have another expectant look at it.
+</p>
+<p>From the bear’s doorway my thoughts turned naturally to a little bogan of my pond,
+which was different from all the other bogans, because once a family of minks darted
+out of it and came dodging along the shore in my direction. Luckily I was close to
+the water at that moment. While the minks were out of sight under some bushes, I swung
+my feet over the bank and sat down in their path to wait for them.
+</p>
+<p>In advance came the mother, looking rusty in her sunburnt summer coat, and she was
+evidently in a great hurry about something. The little ones, trailing out behind,
+were hard put to it to keep up the pace. She was fairly under me before she noticed
+a new scent in the air, which made her halt to look about for the meaning of it. Her
+neck <span class="pageNum" id="pb285">[<a href="#pb285">285</a>]</span>was lifted, weasel-fashion, to thrice its ordinary length; at the end of it her pointed
+head swung like a vane to the bank, to the pond, to the bank again; while her busy
+nose wiggled out its sharp questions. Probably she had no notion of man, never having
+met the creature; neither did she associate the motionless figure above her with life
+or danger. She passed directly over one of my shoes, halted with her paws raised against
+the other, and scampered on as if she had no use for such trifles.
+</p>
+<p>Before the little ones arrived I half turned to meet them, spreading my feet so as
+to leave a narrow passageway between the heels; and over this, as a cover, rested
+my hand, making a shadowy runway such as minks like. When the kits entered it, sleek
+and glossy and half grown, I touched them lightly on the neck, feeling the soft brush
+of fur and the ripple of elastic muscles as one after another glided under my finger,
+with no more concern than if it had been one of the roots among which they were accustomed
+to creep. But when the last one came I blocked the runway by placing a hand squarely
+across it, stopping him short in great astonishment. He sniffed at the obstruction,
+and his nose was like a point of ice as it wandered over my palm. Then he tried a
+finger with his teeth, wriggled under it to follow his leader, and the whole family
+disappeared in a <span class="pageNum" id="pb286">[<a href="#pb286">286</a>]</span>twisting, snakelike procession around the next bend. These were <i>wild</i> animals, remember; and ounce for ounce there is no more “savage” beast in the woods
+than Cheokhes the mink.
+</p>
+<p>As with birds or beasts, so also with the trees about my pond: somehow they seemed
+different from all other trees, perhaps because of more intimate association; for
+though all the cedars or hemlocks of a forest look alike to a stranger, no sooner
+do you spend days alone among them than you begin to have a curious feeling of individuality,
+of comradeship, of understanding even, as if they were not wholly dumb or insensate.
+It was inevitable, therefore, as I came down the trail, recalling this or that tree
+under which I had often passed or rested, that certain of them stood forth in memory
+as having given me pleasure or greeting in the lonely woods, just as certain faces
+emerge from the sea of faces in a crowd or a great audience of strangers, and instantly
+make one feel his kinship to humanity.
+</p>
+<p>Foremost among these memorable trees was a great white-pine, to me the noblest of
+all forest growths, which stood on a knoll to westward of my pond, on the way to camp,
+and which always seemed to cry hail or farewell as I came or went. It had a stem to
+make one wonder, almost to make one reverent. Massive, soft-colored, finely reticulated
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb287">[<a href="#pb287">287</a>]</span>it was; wide as the span of a man’s arms, and rising near a hundred feet without knot
+or branch,—a glorious upspringing shaft, immensely strong, yet delicate in its poise
+as a lance in rest. From the top of the shaft rugged arms were stretched out above
+the tallest trees, and on these rested lightly as a cloud its crown of green. Like
+others that overtop their fellows, the old pine had paid the penalty of greatness.
+Whirlwinds that left lower trees untouched had stripped it of half its branches; lightning
+had leaped upon it from the clouds, leaving a spiral scar from crown to foot; but
+the wound which threatened its death was meanwhile its life, because the lumbermen,
+seeing the lightning’s mark, had passed on and left the pine in its solitary grandeur.
+</p>
+<p>When I first saw that tree I changed the trail so as to pass beneath it; and thereafter
+it was like a living presence, benign and friendly, beside the way. To lay a hand
+on its mighty stem, as one passed eastward in the early morning, was to receive an
+impression of renewed power,—a power which the scornful might attribute to imagination,
+the chemist to electrons or radio-activity, and the simple man to his Mother Nature.
+At evening, as one followed the dim trail homeward in the fading light, one had only
+to look up for a guiding sign; and there, solemn and still against the twilight <span class="pageNum" id="pb288">[<a href="#pb288">288</a>]</span>splendor, was the crown of the old pine to give direction. Its very silence at such
+an hour was like the Angelus ringing. To halt beneath it, as one often did unconsciously,
+was to feel the spell of its age, its serenity, its peace; while harmonious thoughts
+came or went attuned to the low melody of the winds, crooning their vesper song far
+up among its green leaves. And, morning or midday or evening, to look up at the pine’s
+lofty crown, which had tossed in the free winds that bore Pilgrim and Puritan westward
+with their immortal dream of freedom, was to be bound with stronger ties of loyalty
+to the fathers of my native state,—men of vision and imagination as well as of stern
+courage, who heard the pine booming out its psalm to the gale and instantly adopted
+it as their new symbol, stamping it on their coins or emblazoning it on their banners
+as an emblem of liberty. Never another symbol, whether dragon or eagle or lion, had
+so much majesty, or was so worthy of free men. The remembrance of it in any national
+crisis or call to duty sets the American heart beating to the rhythm of Whittier’s
+“Pine-Tree”:
+</p>
+<div class="lgouter">
+<p class="line">Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield,
+</p>
+<p class="line">Give to northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered field.
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb289">[<a href="#pb289">289</a>]</span></p>
+<p class="line">Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,
+</p>
+<p class="line">Answering England’s royal missive with a firm “Thus saith the Lord,”
+</p>
+<p class="line">Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!
+</p>
+<p class="line">What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.</p>
+</div>
+<p class="first">Very different from the majestic pine was a little larch-tree, under which I often
+sat while watching the deer. As I came down the trail, after a year’s absence, it
+would seem to lift its head and step forth from all the other larches, calling out
+cheerily: “Welcome once more! And why so long away? See, here is your old place waiting.”
+And drawing aside the delicate branches, I would find the seat of dry moss and springy
+boughs, the back-rest, the open window with its drapery of lace,—everything just as
+I had left it.
+</p>
+<p>Near this sociable young larch stood its dead ancestor, grim and silent, which the
+moths had killed; and this, too, seemed different from all other trees living or dead.
+On sunny days it threw a straight shaft of shadow over my blind; and the shadow moved
+along the ground from west to east, telling the creeping hours like a sun-dial. At
+the tip of the lofty stub a short branch thrust itself out at a right angle, and this
+served <span class="pageNum" id="pb290">[<a href="#pb290">290</a>]</span>as the finger of my strange timepiece. When it rested on a bed of brimming pitcher-plants
+it pointed to the lunch in my pocket; when it touched the root of a water-maple it
+spoke of the home trail; and between, at irregular intervals, were a nanny-bush, a
+tuft of wild cotton and a shy orchid to mark the less important hours. Once, when
+I glanced at the slow-moving shadow, it was topped by a striking symbolic figure,
+and looking up quickly I found an eagle perched on the outstretched finger of my dial.
+After that the old tamarack had a new dignity in my eyes; it stood on an eagle’s line
+of flight, one of his regular ways in crossing from mountain to lake, and from it
+the kingly-looking bird was wont to survey this part of his silent domain, the sun
+gleaming on his snow-white crest.
+</p>
+<p>A stone’s-throw behind my larch blind was a portly young fir, which I could never
+pass without a smile as it nodded to remind me that it was not like other firs. Thousands
+of these trees, crowding the northern forest, seem to be all grown on the same model,
+like peas in a pod; but this one had a character and a history to set it forever apart
+from its kind. And this is the tale which always passed silently between us when we
+met:
+</p>
+<p>One day, as I watched some deer at the salt-lick, they suddenly became uneasy, looking
+and harking <span class="pageNum" id="pb291">[<a href="#pb291">291</a>]</span>about as if for danger, and then vanished down the several game-trails. Not till they
+were gone did I notice that the air was ominously still, or understand the cause of
+the alarm: a tempest was coming, and the sensitive animals were away to cover before
+my dull senses had picked up the first warning sign. Soon the landscape darkened;
+the face of my pond became as I had never seen it before; thunder growled in the distance;
+coppery clouds with light flaming through them came rolling over the tree-tops; and
+all nature said, as plainly as a fire-bell, “Get to cover, and quickly!”
+</p>
+<p>As I went back into the woods, seeking shelter, a few big drops hit the leaves like
+flails; then came a pause, still as death, and then the deluge. Ahead in the gloom
+I spied a young fir (never pick a tall tree, or a solitary tree, in a tempest of lightning)
+which thrust out a mass of feathery branches from a thicket of its fellows. “This
+for mine,” I said as I dived under it, accompanied by a blinding flare of light and
+an ear-splitting crack—and almost ran against the heels of a buck that jumped out
+on the other side. By an odd chance, one in ten thousand, he had picked the same fir
+for shelter, and was no doubt thinking he had picked well when I came blundering in
+with the thunderbolt and drove him out into the downpour. <span class="pageNum" id="pb292">[<a href="#pb292">292</a>]</span>“Hold on, old sport! Come back; it’s your tree,” I called after him, feeling as if
+I had stolen a child’s umbrella; but he paid no attention.
+</p>
+<p>Thinking he would not go far, and knowing he could hear or smell nothing in that rush
+of rain and crashing of thunder, I crept slowly after him. There he was, hunched up
+in the lee of a big hemlock, ears drooping, legs streaming, and little spurts of mist
+popping up from his pelted hide. Though woebegone enough, he had not forgotten caution;
+oh no! trust an old buck for that in any weather. His tail was to the tree, his head
+turned warily to the trail over which he had come. And there I left him, wishing as
+I turned back that he would let me stand under his hemlock, or else come and share
+my fir, just for a little company.
+</p>
+<p>Near the lower end of my pond was still another tree which I must revisit; yes, surely,
+not only for its happy memories, but also in anticipation of some merry surprise,
+of which it seemed to have endless store. It stood on a bank overlooking a sunny dell
+in the woods, a wonderfully pleasant place where no wind entered, where the air was
+always fragrant, and a runlet of cool water sang a little tune to itself all day long.
+Its gnarled trunk was scarcely more than a shell, which boomed like a drum when a
+woodpecker sounded it; and above were hollow limbs with knot-hole <span class="pageNum" id="pb293">[<a href="#pb293">293</a>]</span>entrances, offering hospitality to any wild creature in search of a weather-proof
+den or nesting-place.
+</p>
+<p>The first time I passed this old tree a family of red squirrels were laying claim
+to it in a tiff with some larger beast or bird, which slipped away as I approached.
+The next time I saw it, a year later, it was silent and apparently deserted; but as
+I rose from drinking at the runlet the head of a little gray owl appeared at a knot-hole.
+For full ten minutes he remained there motionless, without word or sign or even a
+blink to say that he was watching me, though it was undoubtedly some noise or stir
+of mine which brought him up to his window.
+</p>
+<p>After that I fell in the way of turning aside to loaf awhile under the inn-tree; and
+rarely could one loaf there very long without overhearing something not intended for
+a stranger’s ear, some low dialogue or hammering signal or petulant whining or cautious
+scratching, to remind one of the running comedy of the woods. It was evidently an
+exchange, a crossroad or meeting-place for the wood folk, calling in every passer-by
+as a certain store or corner of a sleepy town invites all idlers, boys and stray dogs,
+while other stores or corners are empty, save for women folk, and quite respectable.
+</p>
+<p>Once in the late morning, as I sat with an ear to <span class="pageNum" id="pb294">[<a href="#pb294">294</a>]</span>the resonant shell, listening to the talk of unseen creatures which I fancied were
+young ’coons, a big log-cock flashed into the old tree, drew himself up on a stub
+over my head, and seemed to cock his ear at the voices to which I had been listening.
+</p>
+<p>Now the log-cock is naturally a wary bird, shy and difficult of approach; but this
+gorgeous fellow with the scarlet crest became almost sociable in his curiosity, perhaps
+because the place was so quiet, so friendly, with no motion or hint of danger to disturb
+its tranquillity. He saw me at once, as the change in his bright eye plainly said;
+but, deceived by my stillness or the sober coloring of my clothes, he set me down
+as a tree-fungus or mushroom that had grown since his last visit, and looked about
+for something more interesting. When I called his attention by a curt nod, telling
+him that this was no dull mushroom, he came down at once to light against the side
+of the tree, where he examined my head minutely. Learning nothing from my wink, he
+went around the tree in a series of side-jumps to have a look from the other side;
+then he hopped up and down, this side or that, all the while uttering a low surprised
+chatter. Even when I began to flip bits of wood at him (for he soon grew impatient,
+and interrupted the ’coon talk by an unseemly rapping), instead of rushing off in
+alarm, he twice followed a missile <span class="pageNum" id="pb295">[<a href="#pb295">295</a>]</span>that rattled near him, as if to demand, “Well, what in the world sent <i>you</i> flying?” Presently he sent forth a call, not the loud, high, prolonged note which
+you hear from him at a distance, but a soft, wheedling <i>ah-koo! ah-koo!</i> only twice repeated. When his call was answered in a different strain, a questioning
+strain it seemed to me, he darted away and returned within the minute accompanied
+by another log-cock.
+</p>
+<p>But enough of such pictures! They flash joyously upon the mental vision whenever one
+recalls a cherished spot in the woods, but fade quickly if one attempts to hold or
+describe them, saying as they vanish that the lure of solitary lakes, the companionship
+of trees, the fascination of wild creatures that hide and look forth with roundly
+curious eyes at a stranger’s approach,—these are matters that can never be set down
+in words: the best always escapes in the telling. I meant only to say (when my pine
+lifted its crown in the light of an evening sky, and then the mink family came dodging
+along the shore of memory, and the buck and the log-cock interrupted to urge me be
+sure and tell the happiest part of the story before I made an end) that many pleasant
+memories greeted me as I came down the silent trail after a long absence. In the distance
+sounded a lusty quacking; my imagination painted the mallards <span class="pageNum" id="pb296">[<a href="#pb296">296</a>]</span>at the end of the alder run, with sunshiny water and crimson bog and misty-green larches
+around them, as a frame for the picture; and then the whole beautiful anticipation
+came tumbling in ruin about my ears.
+</p>
+<p>Before I reached my pond, before I saw the welcoming gleam of it even, I was at every
+step going over my shoetops in water, where formerly I had always found dry footing.
+Something disastrous had happened in my absence; the whole bog was overflowed; around
+it was no mist of delicate foliage but only skeleton trees, stark and pitiful. In
+my heart I was berating the lumbermen, whose ugly works are the ruination of every
+place they visit, when at last I waded to an opening that gave outlook on my pond;
+and the first thing I noticed, as my eyes swept the familiar scene, was a beaver-house
+cocked up on the shore, like a warning sign of new ownership.
+</p>
+<p>It is true that blessings brighten as they take their flight: not till I read that
+crude sign of dispossession did I know how much pleasure my little pond had given
+me. The lonely beauty which could quiet a man like a psalm, or like an Indian’s wordless
+prayer; the glimpses of wild creatures at home and unafraid; the succession of radiant
+pictures, at sunny midday, or beneath the hushed twilight, or in the expectant morning
+before <span class="pageNum" id="pb297">[<a href="#pb297">297</a>]</span>the shadows come,—all these had suddenly taken wing, driven away by mud-grubbing animals
+with a notion in their dull heads that they wanted deeper water about the site they
+had chosen for their house of sticks. It was too bad, too hopeless! I might have prevented
+the ruin had I known; but now it was beyond all remedy. With a different interest,
+therefore, and still resentful that my pond was spoiled as thoroughly as any lumberman
+would have spoiled it, I made my way around the flood to examine the beavers’ work
+at the outlet.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p297width"><img src="images/p297.png" alt="Animal." width="324" height="163"></div><p>
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb298">[<a href="#pb298">298</a>]</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div id="ch15" class="div1 last-child chapter"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#xd32e326">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divHead">
+<div class="figure"><img src="images/p298.png" alt="XV" width="546" height="330"></div>
+<h2 class="label">XV</h2>
+<h2 class="main">Beaver Work</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="divBody">
+<p class="first">Hidden among the larches at the lower end of my pond was a tiny outgoing stream, which
+had proved hard to find when first I explored the region, and almost impossible to
+follow afterward. Under a fallen log, so weathered and mossy that it seemed part of
+the natural shore, a volume of water escaped without ripple or murmur, wandering away
+under bending grasses to lose itself in an alder swamp, where innumerable channels
+offered it lingering passage. From the swamp it found its way, creepingly, among brooding
+cedars to a little brook, which went singing far down through the woods to Upper Pine
+Pond; and beyond that on the farther side was a long dead-water, <span class="pageNum" id="pb299">[<a href="#pb299">299</a>]</span>and then Pine Stream making its tortuous way through an untraveled region to the Penobscot.
+The nearest beavers, a colony of four lodges which I unearthed on a hidden branch
+of Pine Stream, were twelve or fifteen miles away, as the water flowed; yet over all
+that distance an exploring family had made its lonely way, guided at every turn by
+the flavor of distant springs, till one after another they crept under the fallen
+log and entered my pond, which was solitary enough to satisfy even their pioneer instincts.
+They had first picked a site for their new lodge, on a point overlooking the lower
+half of the pond, and had then gone back to the outlet to raise the water.
+</p>
+<p>Their dam was a rare piece of wild engineering; so much I had to confess, even while
+I wished that the beavers had chosen some other place to display their craft. Finding
+where the water escaped, they stopped the opening beneath the log, and made a bank
+of mud and alder-brush above it. This bank was carried out a dozen feet or more on
+either side of the stream, the ends being bent forward (toward the pond above) so
+as to make a very fine concave arch. On a small or quiet stream like this, beavers
+almost invariably build a straight dam; and where swift water calls for a stronger
+or curving structure, they present the convex side to the current; but here they had
+<span class="pageNum" id="pb300">[<a href="#pb300">300</a>]</span>reversed both rules, for some reason or impulse which I could not fathom,—except on
+the improbable assumption that the animals could foresee the end of their work from
+the beginning. The finished dam was an amazingly good one, as you shall see; but whether
+it resulted from planning or happy experiment or just following the water, only a
+certain old beaver could tell.
+</p>
+<p>Since there was no other outlet to my pond, the beavers were obliged to build here;
+but the site was a poor one, the land being uniformly low on all sides, and no sooner
+did they finish their dam than the rising water flowed around both ends of it. To
+remedy this they pushed out a curving wing from either end of their first arch, so
+that the line of their dam was now a pretty triple-curve. Again and again the outgoing
+water crept around the obstacle; each time the beavers added other curving wings,
+now on this side, now on that, bending them steadily forward till the top of their
+dam suggested the rim of an enormous scallop-shell. Then, finding the water deep enough
+for their needs, they thrust out a straight wing from either end of their dam, resting
+their work on the slopes of two hillocks in the woods, some fifty yards apart,—this
+in a straight line, or across the hinge of the scallop-shell: if measured on the curves,
+their dam was three or four times that length. Their <span class="pageNum" id="pb301">[<a href="#pb301">301</a>]</span>next task was to build a lodge on the point above; then they dug a canal through the
+bog to the nearest grove of hardwood, and cut down a liberal part of the trees for
+their winter supply of bark. The branches of these trees had been cut into convenient
+lengths, floated through the canal, and stored in a great food-pile in the deep water
+near the lodge.
+</p>
+<p>When I found the dam, several deer (to judge from the tracks) were already using the
+top of it as a runway in passing from the flooded ground on one side of the pond to
+the other. From either end a game-trail led upward along the shore, no longer following
+immemorial paths over the bog, which was submerged with all its splendor of color,
+but making a new and rougher way through the black growth. When I followed one of
+these trails it led me completely around the pond, going confidently till it neared
+the salt-lick, where it halted, wavered and trickled out in aimless wanderings. There,
+where once the ground was trodden smooth by many feet, was now no ground to be seen.
+The precious spring, over which a thousand generations of deer had lingered, had vanished
+in a dull waste of water. Twice I watched the place from early morning till owls began
+to cry the twilight; in that time only a few animals appeared, singly, at long intervals;
+and after wandering about as if <span class="pageNum" id="pb302">[<a href="#pb302">302</a>]</span>seeking something and finding it not, they disappeared in the dusky woods.
+</p>
+<p>And so I went away, looking for the last time sadly on the little pond, as upon a
+place one has owned and loved, but which has passed into other hands. Though the wild
+ducks still breed or gather there, it is no longer the same. There is no restful spot
+from which to watch the waters dance with the wind, or frown at the cloud, or smile
+at the sunshine; the little larches are all dead beside their ancestors; the carpet
+of colored moss is but a memory. When the beavers go to pioneer a remoter spot, I
+shall break their dam and let the water return to its ancient level. Then, if happily
+I live long enough for another fringe of larches to grow, and another mossy rug to
+crimson under the waning sun, perhaps it will be my pond once more.
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure p302width"><img src="images/p302.png" alt="Beaver." width="276" height="193"></div><p>
+</p>
+<p class="trailer center">THE END</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="back">
+<div class="div1 cover"><span class="pageNum">[<a href="#toc">Contents</a>]</span><div class="divBody">
+<p class="first"></p>
+<div class="figure spinewidth"><img src="images/spine.jpg" alt="Original Spine." width="136" height="720"></div><p>
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;
+</p>
+<p></p>
+<div class="figure backwidth"><img src="images/backcover.jpg" alt="Original Back Cover." width="549" height="720"></div><p>
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="transcriberNote">
+<h2 class="main">Colophon</h2>
+<h3 class="main">Availability</h3>
+<p class="first">This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
+Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at <a class="seclink xd32e46" title="External link" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/">www.gutenberg.org</a>.
+</p>
+<p>This eBook is produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at <a class="seclink xd32e46" title="External link" href="https://www.pgdp.net/">www.pgdp.net</a>.
+</p>
+<h3 class="main">Metadata</h3>
+<table class="colophonMetadata">
+<tr>
+<td><b>Title:</b></td>
+<td>How animals talk and other pleasant studies of birds and beast</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>Author:</b></td>
+<td>William Joseph Long (1867–1952)</td>
+<td>Info <span class="externalUrl">https://viaf.org/viaf/15260441/</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>Illustrator:</b></td>
+<td>Charles Copeland (1858–1945)</td>
+<td>Info <span class="externalUrl">https://viaf.org/viaf/56202685/</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>File generation date:</b></td>
+<td>2024-02-21 18:51:31 UTC</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>Language:</b></td>
+<td>English</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>Original publication date:</b></td>
+<td>1919</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h3 class="main">Revision History</h3>
+<ul>
+<li>2024-02-04 Started.
+</li>
+</ul>
+<h3 class="main">Corrections</h3>
+<p>The following 3 corrections have been applied to the text:</p>
+<table class="correctionTable">
+<tr>
+<th>Page</th>
+<th>Source</th>
+<th>Correction</th>
+<th>Edit distance</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="width20"><a class="pageref" href="#xd32e1000">98</a></td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">show-shoes</td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">snow-shoes</td>
+<td class="bottom">1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="width20"><a class="pageref" href="#xd32e1247">141</a></td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">‘</td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">“</td>
+<td class="bottom">1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="width20"><a class="pageref" href="#xd32e1362">161</a></td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">How</td>
+<td class="width40 bottom" lang="en">how</td>
+<td class="bottom">1</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW ANIMALS TALK ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-15 21:30:54 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-15 21:30:54 -0800
commit	398e2cd7bdd07306ebcc4da30a1554b7c999f665 (patch)
tree	fb2192c8afe2a58e757da59a3fd085285f0fc7cb