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|
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<title>How animals talk and other pleasant studies of birds and beast</title>
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<meta name="author" content="William Joseph Long (1867–1952)">
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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 & 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 & 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. <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). <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. <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. <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>
</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>
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