HOW ANIMALS TALK

***• I •

, • ••••
.... •••*

rhe old vixen lies apart where she can overlook the play and the
neighborhood.

HOW ANIMALS TALK

And Other Pleasant Studies
of 'Birds and 'Beasts

BY

WILLIAM J. LONG

Author of

"School of the Woods" "Northern Trails"
"Brier-Patch Philosophy" etc.

Illustrations and Decorations by
CHARLES COPELAND

HARPER & BROTHERS^PU^BLfSti&RS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

flow ANIMALS TALK

C «>*9» ^ Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published August, 1919

0-T

Contents

CHAP.

I. A LITTLE DOG-COMEDY 3

II. CRIES OF THE DAY AND NIGHT 10

III. CHUMFO, THE SUPER-SENSE 34

IV. NATURAL TELEPATHY 74

V. THE SWARM SPIRIT in

VI. WHERE SILENCE Is ELOQUENT 137

VII. ON GETTING ACQUAINTED . . . ., 175

VIII. ON KEEPING STILL 195

IX. AT CLOSE RANGE 211

X. THE TRAIL 237

XL WOODSY IMPRESSIONS 247

XII. LARCH-TREES AND DEER 256

XIII. BLACK MALLARDS 266

XIV. MEMORIES 283

XV. BEAVER WORK 298

Illustrations

THE OLD VIXEN LIES APART WHERE SHE CAN OVER-
LOOK THE PLAY AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD . . . Frontispiece

HE FLINGS OUT A SINGLE "HAW!" AND THE DUCKS
SPRING ALOFT ON THE INSTANT AND HEAD SWIFTLY

OUT TO SEA Facing p. 20

A SHADOW MOVED FROM THE DARKER SHADOW OF AN
UPTURNED ROOT — AND A GREAT BUCK STOOD
ALERT ON THE OPEN SHORE " 54

THEY STOOD TENSE AS THEY SEARCHED THE PLAIN
AND SURROUNDING WOODS FOR THE SOURCE OF
DANGER ^ " 102

THE COURSE HE TOOK WAS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT
FROM THAT TAKEN BY THE MAN WHO BROUGHT
THE VIXEN HOME " 166

So INNOCENT AND So APPEALING THAT IT Is HARD TO

KEEP YOUR HANDS FROM HIM " 192

His MASSIVE HEAD THRUST FORWARD AS HE TRIED
TO PENETRATE THE FAR DISTANCE WITH His
NEAR-SIGHTED EYES 252

AT SUCH A TIME MY POND SEEMED TO AWAKEN AND

SHED ITS SILENCE LIKE A GARMENT " 270

I

DID you ever see two friendly dogs meet when
one tried to tell the other of something he
had discovered, when they touched noses, stood
for a moment in strange, silent parley, then wagged
their tails with mutual understanding and hurried
off together on a canine junket?

That was the little comedy which first drew my
attention to the matter of animal communication,
many years ago, and set my feet in the unblazed
trail we are now to follow. And a very woodsy
trail you shall find it, dim and solitary, with plenty
of "blind" spots where one may easily go astray,
and without any promise of what waits at the
other end of it.

How Animals Talk

One summer afternoon I was reading by the
open window, while my old setter, Don, lay flat
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 ex-
citement to wake the old dog up. Don half raised
his head, recognized his friend Nip and thumped
the ground lazily with his tail.

"It's all right, little dog. You're always excited
over something of no consequence; but don't
bother me this hot day," he said, in dog-talk, and
dropped his head to sleep again.

But Nip was not to be put aside, having some-
thing big on his mind. He nudged Don sharply,
and the old dog sprang to his feet as if galvanized.
For an interval of perhaps five seconds they stood
motionless, tense, their noses almost touching;
then Don's plume began to wave.

"Oh, I see!" he said; and Nip's stubby tail
whipped violently, as if to add, "Thank Heaven
you do, at last!" The next moment they were
away on the jump and disappeared round a corner
of the house.

Here was comedy afoot, so I slipped out through
the back door to follow it. The dogs took no notice
of me, and probably had no notion that they were
observed; for I took pains to keep out of sight

A Little Dog-Comedy

till the play was over. Through the hay-field they
led me, across the pasture lot, and over a wall at
the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering
through a chink of the wall, I saw Nip dancing
and barking at a rock-pile, and between two of
the rocks was a woodchuck cornered.

For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that
same woodchuck, which had a den on the hillside
in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some
garden truck. A dozen times, to my knowledge,
the little dog had rushed the rascal; but as Nip
was fat and the chuck cunning, the chase always
ended the same way, one comedian diving into the
earth with a defiant whistle, leaving the other to
scratch or bark impotently outside.

Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of
such an uneven game; but a terrier is not a rea-
sonable 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 pres-
ence of grouse or woodcock he would still become
splendidly animate, and then the years would slip
from him as a garment; but to stupid ground-
hogs and all such "small deer" he was loftily in-
different. 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

2 [5]

How Animals Talk

Nip once and finding nothing more exciting than
a hole in the ground, with the familiar smell of
woodchuck about it, he had left the terrier to his
own amusement.

When speed failed, or wind, it was vastly amus-
ing 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 whis-
tled into his den with time to spare.

On this summer afternoon, however, Nip had
better luck or used better tactics. Whether he
went round the hill and came over the top from
an unexpected quarter, or lay in wait in his accus-
tomed place with more than his accustomed pa-
tience, 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

[6]

A Little Dog-Comedy

the rocks. There Nip's courage failed him. He
was a little dog with a big bark; and the sight of
the grizzled veteran with back against a stone
and both flanks protected probably made him
realize that it is one thing to chase a chuck which
runs away, but quite another thing to enter his
cave while he stands facing you, his beady eyes
snapping and his big teeth bare. So after a spell
of brave barking Nip had rushed off to fetch a
larger dog.

All that was natural enough, and very doglike;
at least it so appeared to me, after seeing other
little dogs play a similar part; but the amazing
feature of this particular comedy was that Nip
had no difficulty in getting help from a champion
who had refused to be interested up to that critical
moment. Through the wall I saw him lead Don
straight to the rocks. The old dog thrust in his
head, yelped once as he was bitten, dragged out
the chuck, gave him a shake and a quieting crunch ;
then, without the slightest evident concern, he
left Nip to worry and finish and brag over the
enemy.

It is part of the fascination of watching any
animal comedy that it always leaves you with a
question; and the unanswerable question here
was, How did Nip let the other dog know what he
wanted ?

[71

How Animals Talk

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 con-
venient 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 wood-
chuck 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 re-
turned from his fruitless digging; and he was
utterly indifferent to such foolish hunting. Many
times before the day of reckoning arrived Nip
had rushed into the yard in the same excitement,
with the same reek of earth and woodchuck about
him; and, so far as one may judge a dog by his
action, Don took no interest in the little dog's
story. Yet he was off on the instant of hearing
that the familiar smell of woodchuck now meant
something more than a hole in the ground.

That some kind of message passed between the
two dogs is, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt;
and it is precisely this silent and mysterious kind of
communication (the kind that occurs when your

[8]

A Little Dog-Comedy

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, how-
ever, 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 inter-
pret. For unless our ears are keen enough to dis-
tinguish between the food and hunting calls of an
animal, or between bob-white's love note and the
yodel that brings his scattered flock together, it
will be idle for us to ask what message or impulse
a mother wolf sends after a running cub when she
lifts her head to look at him steadily, and he
checks his rush to return to her side as if she had
made the murky woods echo to her assembly
clamor.

II

HPHE simplest or most obvious method of
1 animal communication is by inarticulate
cries, expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleas-
ure, 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

[10]

Cries of the Day and Night

sends him flying away from it, according to its
message or import.

That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore,
beyond serious doubt; but whether they have,
like our simplest words, any definite or unchanging
value is still a question, the probable answer being
"No," since a word is the symbol of a thought or
an idea; but animals live in a world of emotion,
and even our human emotions are mostly dumb or
inarticulate. I must give this negative answer,
notwithstanding the fact that I have learned to
call various birds and beasts, and that I can meet
Hotspur's challenge on hearing Glendower boast
that he can call spirits from the vasty deep:

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?

Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you
know how to give the right call; but I am still
doubtful whether among themselves their audible
cries are ever quite so intelligible as is their silence.

This question of animal speech has received a
different and more positive answer, by the way,
from a man who has spent many years in persistent
observation of wild apes and monkeys. After
watching the lively creatures from his cage in the
jungle, attracting them by means of various fruits
and recording their jabber in a phonograph, he

[n]

How Animals Talk

claims to have discovered the monkey words for
food, water, danger and other elementary matters.
Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these
simian words the monkeys of another locality seem
to understand them, since they run to the proper
dish at the word "food" or show evident signs of
alarm at the word "danger."

It is doubtless much easier to deny such a con-
clusion 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 con-
cerned. 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 occa-
sionally 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 im-
mensely patient observation.

To return to first-hand evidence: among wild
creatures of my acquaintance the crows come

[12]

Cries of the Day and Night

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 su-
periority over parrots and other mere mimics by
using one or more of the words intelligently.
There was one crow, for example, that would re-
peat the word "hungry" in guttural fashion when-
ever 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 impres-
sion 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 asso-
ciation with a primal need, there is nothing to
prevent him from using a sound or symbol of his
ov/n in the same way. In other words, he must
have some small faculty of language.

Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy
named Pharaoh Necho because of his hippety-hop
walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games,
play, social gatherings of every kind. To excite-
ment from any source, whether bird or brute or
human, he was as responsive as a weather-vane;

[13]

How Animals Talk

but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to some-
thing 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. Glid-
ing noiselessly down behind the unconscious cat
he would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting
tail with his beak. It was a startling blow, and
at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed
he would fly off, "chuckling" immoderately.

When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys as-
sembled he would neglect even his dinner to join
them; and presently, without ever having been
taught, he announced himself master of a new art
by yelling, "Ya-hoo! Come on!" which was the
rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood.
He said this in ludicrous fashion, but unmistak-
ably 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

[14]

Cries of the Day and Night

part he waited till boys were gathering for a
swim or a ball game, when he would launch
himself into flight and go skimming down the
road, whooping out his new cry exultantly. What
meaning he attached to the words, whether of
boys or fun or mere excitement, I have no means
of knowing.

After learning this much of our speech Necho
took to the wild, following a call of the blood, I
think; for it was springtime when he disappeared,
and the crows' mating clamor sounded from every
woodland. These birds are said to kill every
.member of their tribe who returns to them after
living with men, , and the saying may have some
truth in it. I have noticed that many tame crows
are like tame baboons in that they seem mortally
afraid of their wild kinsmen ; but Necho was ap-
parently an exception. If he had any trouble
when first he returned to his flock, the matter was
settled without our knowledge, and during the
following autumn there was evidence that he was
again in good standing. Long afterward, as I
roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty "Ya-
hoo! Come on!" from where he led a yelling rabble
of crows to chivvy a sleeping owl or jeer at a
running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry
sounded over the tree-tops when I could not see
him or know what mischief was afoot. He never

How Animals Talk

returned to the house, and never again joined our
play or allowed a boy to come near him.

Not all crows have this "gift of speech"; and
the fact that one tame crow learns to use a few
English words, while five or six others hold fast
to their own lingo, has led to the curious belief
that, if you want to make a crow talk, you must
split his tongue. How such a belief originated is a
mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread
when I was a boy that no sooner was a young crow
taken from a nest than jack-knives were sharpened,
and the leathery end of the crow's tongue was
solemnly split after grave debate whether a
seventh or a third part was the proper medicine.
If the crow talked after that, it was proof positive
that the belief was true; and if he remained dumb,
it was a sign that there was something wrong in
the splitting; which is characteristic of a large
part of our natural-history reasoning. The de-
bates I have heard or read on the "unanswerable"
question of how a chipmunk digs a hole without
leaving any earth about the entrance (a question
with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly
suggestive of the split-tongue superstition of crow
language.

Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe,
only a small proportion showed any tendency to
repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I judge,

[16]

Cries of the Day and Night

the same crows that in a wild state may occasion-
ally be heard whistling like a jay, or "barking"
or "hooting" or making some other call which
ordinary crows do not or cannot make, and which
shows an individual talent of mimicry. This last,
which I have repeatedly observed among wild
crows, is a very different matter from speech;
but from the fact that these mimics learn to use a
few English words more or less intelligently one
might not be far wrong in concluding that every
crow has in his brain a small undeveloped nest of
cells corresponding to our "bump" of language.
A closer observation of the wild birds may
confirm this possibility. Thus, when you hear a
solitary crow in a tree-top crying, "Haw! Haw!"
monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail
every time he repeats it, you may be sure that
somewhere within range of his eye or voice a
flock of his own kind are on the ground, feeding.
That this particular haw is a communication to his
fellows, telling them that the sentinel is on watch
and all is well, seems to me very probable. There
are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously resolve
the whole phenomenon into blind chance or acci-
dent ; 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

[17]

How Animals Talk

shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly
guarding, the rest were no sooner out of danger
than they whirled upon the recreant and beat
him savagely to the ground.

If you are interested enough to approach any
crow-sentinel in a casual or indifferent kind of
way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly or
directly), you must note that his haw changes
perceptibly while you are yet far off. It is no
longer formal or monotonous; nor is it uttered
with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly
see. You would pronounce and spell the cry
exactly as before (it should be written aw or haw,
not caw, for there is no consonant sound in it);
but if your ears are keen, they will detect an
entirely different accent or inflection, as they
detect different accents and meanings when a
sailor's casual or vibrant "Sail ho!" sings down
from the crow-nest of a ship. Now run a few
steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and
creep, and instantly the haw changes again. This
time the accent is sharper even to your dull ears;
and hardly is the cry uttered when all the crows of
the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading swiftly
away to the woods and safety.

Apparently, therefore, this simple haw of the
crow is like a root word of certain ancient lan-
guages, the Chinese, for example, which has sev-

[18]

Cries of the Day and Night

eral different intonations to express different ideas,
but which all sound alike to foreign ears, and
which are spelled alike when they appear in
foreign print. To judge by the crows' action, it is
certain that their elementary haw has at least
three distinct accents to express as many different
meanings: one of "all's well," another of "watch
out," and a third of "be off!" Moreover, the
birds seem to understand these different meanings
as clearly as we understand plain English; they
feed quietly while haw means one thing, or spring
aloft when it means another; and though you
watch them a lifetime you will see nothing to
indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in
their minds as to the sentinel's message.

Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well,
and the deer and the fox and many other creat-
ures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly, or at
least a part of it which concerns their own welfare.
Thus, on the seacoast in winter you hear the crows
hawing continually as they follow the tide-line in
search of food. For hours this talk goes on,
loudly or sleepily, and the wild ducks pay abso-
lutely 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-

[19]

How Animals Talk

fowl to be suspicious of the black freebooter and
to be alert when they see or hear him; but no
sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you
learn a thing to make you respect the crow, and
perhaps to make you wonder how much or how
very little you know of the ways of the wood folk.
Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards
especially, like to come ashore every day in a
secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to
rest or preen or take a quiet nap in company. It
is a tempting sight to see a score or a hundred of
the splendid birds in a close group, their heads
mostly tucked under their wings; but it is prac-
tically 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 hid-
ing behind a bush. He flings out a single haw!
with warning, danger, derision in it; and now the
same ducks that have heard him all day without
concern spring aloft on the instant and head
swiftly out to sea.

[20)

EJV flings out a single "Haw!" and the* duck$ spring aloft o,n,the
H instant and head swiftly out to sea. ;\; ; \ ;

Cries of the Day and Night

The crows have several other variations of
the same cry, expressive of other matters, which
all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but which
are meaningless to human ears. When I imitate
the distress-call of a young crow, for example, I
can bring a flock over my head at almost any
time, the only condition being that I keep well
concealed. At the first glimpse of a man in hiding
they sheer off, and it is seldom that I can bring
them back a second time to the same spot; yet
I have a companion, one who utters a call very
much like mine to ordinary ears, who can bring
the flock back to him even after they have seen
him and suffered at his hands. More than once
I have stood beside him in the woods and fired a
gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the
flock pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does
he begin to talk crow-talk than back they come
again. What he says to them that I do not or
cannot say is something that only the crows
understand.

It is commonly assumed that they come to such
a call because they hear in it a cry for help from
one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly true
at times ; for a help-call, especially from a cub or
nestling, is a summons to which most animals and
birds instinctively respond. And, strangely enough,
the smaller they are the braver they seem to be.

[21]

How Animals Talk

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 cir-
cled around me at a safe distance when I came
near their young. In the majority of cases, how-
ever, I think that birds come to a distress-call
simply because the excitement of an individual
spreads to all creatures within sight or hearing,
just as a crowd of men or women will become
excited and rush to a common center before they
know what the stir is all about.

In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary
to cry like a distressed young crow to bring a flock
over your head. The imitated hawing of an old
crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper
excitement into it. Again, on any summer day
you will hear in your own yard the pip-pip of
arriving or departing robins. The same call is
uttered by both sexes, at all times and in all
places ; yet if you listen closely you must note that
there is immense variety in the accent or inflection
of even this simple sound. The call is clear,
ringing, joyous when the robins first arrive in the
spring; it is subdued when they gather for the
autumn flight ; it is sleepy or querulous when they
stand full-fed by the nest, and most business-like
when they launch themselves into flight, which is
the moment when you are most sure to hear it.

[22]

Cries of the Day and Night

A robin utters this call hundreds of times every
day, in one accent or another, and neither the
other robins nor their feathered neighbors seem
to pay any attention to it ; but when a red squirrel
comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin
sends forth the same pip-pip with a different
intonation, then the response is instantaneous. The
alarm spreads swiftly over wood and field ; clamor
uprises, and birds of many species come rushing
in from all directions; not because they have
heard that Meeko is again killing young robins
(at least, it does not seem so to me), but because
excitement is afoot, and they are bound to join
it or find out about it before they can settle down
comfortably to their own affairs.

There is an interesting way by which you
may test this contagion of excitement for yourself.
Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other bird
neighborhood in the early morning, preferably at
a season when every nest has eggs or fledglings
in it; press two fingers against your lips and draw
the breath sharply between them, repeating the
squeaky cry as rapidly as possible. The sound
has a peculiarly exciting quality even to human
ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer
it), and birds come to it as boys to a fire alarm.
In a few moments you may have them streaming
in from the four quarters of bird world, all highly

[23]

How Animals Talk

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 them-
selves will come almost as readily to the call when
the nesting season is over and gone.

I have tried that same exciting summons in many
places, wild or settled, and commonly but not
invariably with the same result, as if it were a
word from the universal bird language. Once in a
secluded valley of northern Italy I saw a hunter
with his gun, and promptly forgot my own errand
in order to chum with him and find out what he
had learned of the wood folk. He was hunting
birds to eat. "Those birds there!" he said, point-
ing 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

[Hi

Cries of the Day and Night

to test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the
hunter to hide with me in a thicket while I gave
the call which had so often brought the feathered
folk of my own New England woods. At my cry
a wisp of birds whirled in to light at the edge of
the covert; the Italian's gun roared; and then I
discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.

I have since had many an uncomfortable mo-
ment 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 imita-
tion of it. Yet the experiment seemed to prove
that everywhere birds quickly catch the contagion
of excitement ; that in many cases they respond to
a call because it stirs their anger or curiosity rather
than because it conveys any definite summons for
help or warning of danger.

When you open your ears among the beasts
you hear precisely the same story; that is, certain
cries apparently have definite meaning, like the
accented haw of a crow, while others convey and
also spread a wild emotion. Of all beasts, the
wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most intelli-
gent, and these seem to have definite calls for food
or help or hunting or assembly. Such calls are

[25]

How Animals Talk

strictly tribal, I think, like the dialects of Indians,
since the call of a coyote is quite different from the
call of a timber wolf even when both intend to
convey the same meaning. A friend of mine, an
excellent mimic, who spent many years in the
West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after
drawing them within range by sending forth the
food-call in winter; but though he knows also the
food-call of the timber wolf, he has never once
deceived these larger brutes by his imitation of it ;
nor has he ever seen a wolf of one species respond
to the food or hunting call of another.

Like most other wild animals, timid or savage,
the sensitive wolves all respond, but much more
warily than the birds, to almost any inarticulate
cry expressive of emotional excitement; just as
your dog, who is yesterday's wolf, grows uneasy
when you whine in your nose like a distressed
puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or
window, when a wild ki-yi breaks out in the dis-
tance. 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 hid-
den 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.

[26]

Cries of the Day and Night

It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever re-
corded up to that time, and every time they heard
it the grim beasts ran wildly here and there,
howling like lunatics^ Then, when the wounded
one grew quiet, they would approach and sniff him
all over; after which some would sit on their tails
and watch him closely, while others circled about
on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search
of a lost trail.

Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny
brutes near me in the North, I have tried to call
them or make them answer by giving what seemed
to me a very good imitation of their cries; but
seldom has a howl of mine been returned. On
the contrary, the brutes almost always stop their
howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if
they were listening and saying, "What under the
moon is that now?" Then old Tomah, the
Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl
exactly like mine, but with something in it which
I cannot fathom or master, and instantly from the
snow-filled woods comes back the wild wolf
answer.

Likewise, I have called moose in many different
localities, and am persuaded that it makes very
little difference what kind of whine or grunt or
bellow you utter, since anything resembling a
moose-call will do the trick if you know how to

[27]

How Animals Talk

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 es-
sentially animal, which brings a bull moose hur-
riedly to investigate. Thus it happens that the
worst caller I ever heard — worst in that he had
no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose
habits, and uttered a blatant, monstrous roar
unlike anything a sane man ever heard in the
heavens above or the earth beneath — was still the
most successful in getting his game into the open.
Three nights in succession I heard him call in a
region where moose were over-shy from much
hunting, and where my own imitation of "the
animal's natural voice brought small response.
In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all that
were within hearing, I think; and every one of
the great brutes threw caution to the dogs and
came out on the jump.

From such observations, and from others which
I have not chronicled, I judge that the higher
orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which
stand for definite things, or mental images of

[28!

Cries of the Day and Night

things, but that their ordinary cries merely pro-
ject 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 cow-
ardly disposition. Yet even among men, who by
civilization have lost some of their natural virtues,
the primal impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the
raccoon, the man's first impulse is to rush to his
distressed or excited fellows. If he turns and runs
the other way, it means simply that his artificial
habit or training has deadened his natural instincts.

In speaking of "man" here I refer to the genus
homo, not to the male specimen thereof. Among
brutes most of the natural instincts are the same
in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind,
and the instincts of the female are commonly the
stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed, or think
I have noticed, this difference: when a cry of
distress is uttered in the woods, the first bird or
beast to appear is almost always a female ; but the
male is quicker on his toes at a battle-yell or a
senseless clamor.

This last is a personal impression, and cannot
well be verified. The only record I have which

[29]

How Animals Talk

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 when-
ever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an
owl, or send forth a senselessly excited hawing,
almost invariably the first crow to come whooping
over is a long-winged and glossy old male.

Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity
on my part to kill crows in this fashion ? Perhaps
it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it
certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame
the crows for their taste in eggs or nestlings; but
one must note that they destroy an enormous num-
ber of insectivorous birds, and that the harm
they do in this respect outweighs their usefulness
in destroying field-mice and beetles. I write this

[30]

Cries of the Day and Night

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 set-
tled 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 sea-
sons. 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 dispro-
portionate 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 com-
munication, which we set out to follow.

The inarticulate but variously accented cries of
which we have spoken constitute the only animal

[31]

How Animals Talk

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 ani-
mals 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 dif-
ferent call; and immediately, as if in ready ac-
ceptance 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 fascinat-
ing and convincing way.

One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the
day or night have their meaning, if only one knows
how to hear them; yet they constitute but a part,
and probably a very small part, of the animal's
habitual communication with his fellows. The
bulk of it appears to be of that silent kind which

[3*1

Cries of the Day and Night

passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have
reason to believe, is the common language of the
whole animal kingdom.

To prove such a matter is plainly impossible.
Even to investigate it frankly is to enter a shadowy
realm between the conscious and subconscious
states, where no process can be precisely followed,
and where the liability to error is always present.
Let us therefore begin on familiar ground by ex-
amining 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.

Ill

FOR the word chumfo I am indebted to a tribe
of savages living near Lake Mweru, in Africa,
and am grateful to them not only for naming a
thing which has no name in any civilized language,
but also for an explanation of its function in the
animal economy. We shall come to the definition
of the word presently, after we have some clear
notion of the thing for which the word stands.
As Thomas a Kempis says, if I remember correctly,
"It is better to feel compassion than to know how
to define it."

By way of approach to our subject, let it be
understood that chumfo refers in a general way to
the animal's extraordinary powers of sense per-

[34l

Chumfo, the Super-sense

ception, which I would call his "sensibility" had
not our novelists bedeviled that good word by
making it the symbol of a false or artificial emotion-
alism. Every wild creature is finely "sensible"
in the true meaning of the word, his sensitiveness
being due to the fact that there is nothing dead
or even asleep in nature ; the natural animal or the
natural man is from head to foot wholly alive and
awake. And this because every atom of him, or
every cell, as a biologist might insist, is of itself
sentient and has the faculty of perception. Not
till you understand that first principle of chumfo
will your natural history be more than a dry
husk, a thing of books or museums or stuffed
skins or Latin names, from which all living interest
has departed.

I am sometimes asked, "What is the most in-
teresting thing you find in the woods?" the ques-
tion 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 awaken-
ing life. That the animal is alive, and alive in a
way you ought to be but are not, is the last and
most fascinating discovery you are likely to make
in nature's kingdom. After years of intimate

[351

How Animals Talk

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 mes-
sage from earth or heaven and he must not miss it
or the consequent enjoyment of his own sensations.
The very sleep of an animal, when he seems ever
on the thin edge of waking, when he is still so in
touch with his changing world that the slightest
strange sound or smell or vibration brings him to
his feet with every sense alert and every muscle
ready, — all this is an occasion of marvel to dull
men, who must be called twice to breakfast, or
who meet the violent clamor of an alarm-clock
with the drowsy refrain:

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber,

A little more folding of the hands to sleep!

You will better understand what I mean by the
animal's aliveness, his uncloying pleasure in the
sensation of living, if you can forget any tragical
theories or prejudices of animal life which you have
chanced to read, and then frankly observe the
first untrammeled creature you meet in the out-
door 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 mouth-

[36]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

fuls, as if living creatures could not be still or con-
tent 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, meas-
ure 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 advent-
urous in it.

Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote
from men, here is a deer slipping shadow-like
through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting
twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and
keeping tabs on every living or moving or growing
thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems to
float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting,
listening, testing the air-smells as one would ap-
preciate a varied landscape, playing Columbus to
every nook or brush-pile and finding in it some-
thing that no explorer ever found before. Such is

4 [37]

How Animals Talk

the natural way of a fox, which makes a devious
trail because so many different odors attract him
here or there.

In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to
understand the singing lines from "Saul":

How good is man's life, the mere living, how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

It is to understand also the spirit of Browning,
who is hardly a world poet, to be sure, but who
has the distinction of being the only famous poet
who is always alive and awake. Homer nods;
Dante despairs and mourns; Shakespeare has a
long period of gloom when he can write only ter-
rible tragedies of human failure; other great poets
have their weary days or melancholy hours, but
Browning sings ever a song of abounding life.
Even his last, the Epilogue to "Asolando," is not
a swan-song, like Tennyson's ; it is rather a bugle-
call, and it sounds not the "taps" of earth, but the
"reveille" of immortality. But we are wandering
from our woodsy trail.

Those who make an ornithology of mere feath-
ers, 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

[38]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

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.

[39]

How Animals Talk

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 dis-
covery but seeing things as they are? This daily
walk over familiar ground, which bores you be-
cause 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 ex-
pectant exploration of the Indes. He explored
the same ground yesterday, to be sure, but all
sorts of revolutions and migrations take place over-
night ; 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 bore-
dom, 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 hap-
piness for the future; and third, that he is alive
now, every moment, and you used to be alive the
day before yesterday.

In all this you are simply typical of our un-
natural civilization, which begins to enumerate or

[40]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

describe us as so many thousand "souls," doubt-
less because every single body of us is moribund
or asleep. Consider our noses, for example. They
are the seat of a wonderful faculty, more depend- KoA
able than sight or hearing; they are capable of ^
giving us sensations more varied than those of £
color, and almost as enjoyable as those of har-
mony; they can be easily trained so as "to recog-
nize 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 enjoy-
ment, did we use them as nature intended; yet so
thoroughly neglected are they, as a rule, that it
takes a burning rag or a jet of escaping coal-gas
to rouse them to the immense and varied world of
odors in which an animal lives continually.

At present I am the alleged owner of a young
setter, Rab, who has reached the stage of develop-
ment 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 con-
vinced, 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 —

[41]

How Animals Talk

excepting, perhaps, the rare days when I take him
woodcock-hunting, when he mildly approves of
me.

One night, after waiting a long time at my feet
till I should become animate, Rab followed me
hopefully into the dark kitchen, where he had
never before been allowed to go. I heard his steps
behind me only as far as the door, and thought
he was afraid to enter; but when I turned on the
light, there he stood in the doorway, " frozen " into
a beautiful point, his head upturned to a bell and
battery on the wall. Presently a mouse hopped
from the battery into a waste-basket on the floor,
and Rab pointed the thing stanchly, his whole
body quivering with delight when a faint odor stole
to his nostrils or a rustle of paper to his ears.
From the basket the mouse streaked to the coal-
hod, and Rab pointed that, too, and then a crack
under a door, and a yawning closet drawer. "My
bones!" he said, trying to claw the drawer open.
"This is a good place; something is alive here!"
Then he came over and sat in front of me, looking
up in my face, his head twisted sideways, to de-
mand why I had so long kept him out of the only
part of the house that was not wholly dormant.

Though the adventure was twelve months ago,
"age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its in-
finite variety," for every night Rab comes to me

[42]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

where I am reading, nudges my elbow, paws my
book, sits in front of me to yawn hugely, gives me
no peace, in short, till I follow him to the kitchen
for another go at the waste-basket, the coal-hod
and all the closet drawers. It is of no avail to
leave the doors open; he will not go unless I join
him in the enjoyment of something that lives. A
short time since we flushed another mouse in the
cellar, whither he followed me to look after the
furnace; and now he pesters me by day as well
as by night whenever he finds me, as he thinks,
wrapped in unmanly lethargy.

With all his vivacity this young setter, who
seems so alert among mere men, becomes a dull
creature the moment you compare him with his
wild kindred. He cannot begin to interpret the
world through his senses as they instantly interpret
it, and he would starve to death where they live
on the fat of the land. Once on a forest trail I
came upon him pointing stanchly at the edge of a
little opening that lumbermen had made for yard-
ing 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

[43]

How Animals Talk

carved from marble, while the buck seemed to
rest on air and to be compounded of some ethereal
essence. His eyes fairly radiated light and color.
The velvet on his antlers seemed to grow as I
looked upon it, like the velvet moss in which the
fairies are said to rest. Every hair of him from
nose to tail tip was gloriously alive. A moment
only he stood, but long enough for me to carry a
picture of him forever afterward ; then he bounded
up the old road, and Rab came running over to
ask me what new thing he had discovered.

This marvelous alertness of the natural animal
is commonly attributed to the fact that his physi-
cal 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 cum-
bered, as we are, by inner phenomena; that he is
free from pain, care, fear, regret, anxiety and

[44]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

other mental complexities; that he is accustomed
to hear (that is, to receive vibrations) through his
feet or his skin quite as much as through his ears ;
and that his whole body, relaxed and at ease, often
becomes a first-class receiving instrument for what
we call sense impressions.

As an example of this last, note the wild creat-
ure's response to every change of air pressure, a
response so immediate and certain that one might
accurately forestall the barometer by observing
the action of birds, or even of chickens, which
anticipate a storm long before your face has noted
the moist wind or your eye the rain-cloud. In the
winter woods I have often seen a deer feeding
greedily (quite at variance with his usual dainty
tasting) at an hour long before or long after his
accustomed time, and as I traveled wider I would
find other deer doing the same thing. I used to
wonder at this, till I noticed that such unusual
action was always followed by a storm — not an
ordinary brief snowfall, to which deer pay little
attention beyond seeking shelter while it lasts, but
a severe storm or blizzard, during which most
animals lie quiet for a whole day, or even two or
three days, without stirring abroad for food.

Whether an element of forethought enters into
this act of "stuffing" themselves before a storm,
or whether it is wholly instinctive, like the bear's

[45]

How Animals Talk

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 instru-
ments, not only the decreasing pressure of the air
but also its increasing moisture.

That such sensitiveness is not of any one organ,
but rather of the whole body, becomes more evi-
dent 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 when-
ever 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 put-
ting 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

[46]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

and some to spare; but on the other eight days,
some clear and some stormy, when the wind was
north of east or west, not a trout was seen or
caught, and only once was a minnow of mine
missing.

It may be said that the trout simply followed
their food-supply; but I doubt this, since trout ap-
parently feed very little in winter; and in formu-
lating any theory of the matter one must account
for the fact that big fish or little fish moved shore-
ward whenever the wind blew south. The phe-
nomenon may appear less foreign to our experience,
though not less mysterious to our reason, if we
rememoer that an old wound or a corn may by
its aching foretell a storm, or that a person suf-
fering from nervous prostration may by his sud-
den depression know that the barometer will soon
be falling.

The same bodily sensitiveness appears un-
changed 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 supplica-
tion; 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

[47]

How Animals Talk

elastic hoofs, and that our pigs respond not only
to vibration of earth or air, but also to some finer
vibration set in motion, apparently, by human
excitement.

Moreover, I have known one dog, old and
half deaf, that, whether asleep or awake, would
respond to the faint tremor of his master's au-
tomobile 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 hun-
dreds. He would sleep for hours on the veranda,
paying no heed to the noise or smell or dust of the
outrageous things, till suddenly he would jump
up, bark, and start for the gate; and in a moment
or two we would see the master's auto rise into
sight over the brow of the hill.

The instant response of deer or dog to minute
external impressions, though startling enough, is
probably wholly physical, a matter of vibrations
on one side and of nerves on the other; but there
are other phenomena of sensitiveness (and these
bring us nearer to our trail of animal communica-

[48]

oy the Super-sense

tion) for which it is much harder to find a satis-
factory 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 observa-
tion, and which appears often enough in human
beings to make not only the inquisitive Society
for Psychical Research but almost every thought-
ful man or woman take some note of it.

For example, a man awake in his bed sees his
son, whom he thinks safely ashore in a foreign
country, fall overboard from a steamer to his
death, at the very hour when the son did fall over-
board, 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 sud-
denly 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 hap-
pened to others also, and as almost every town or
village has a convincing example of its own, I

[49]

How Animals Talk

forbear details and accept the fact, and try here to
view or understand it as a natural phenomenon.

At first you may strongly object even to my
premise, calling it incredible that sense -bound
mortals should feel a danger that their eyes can-
not 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 per-
ception to five habitual modes, shamefully neglect-
ing to cultivate even these, and ignoring the use
or the existence of other and perhaps finer means
of contact with the external world. Again, it is
not a whit more incredible that sensitive creatures,
whether brute or human, should feel the coming
or going of a person than that they should feel
his look or glance, as they certainly do.

This last is no cloudy theory; it is a plain fact
which endures the test of observation. Almost
any man of strong personality can disturb or
awaken a sleeping wild animal simply by looking
at him intently; and the nearer the man is the
more certain the effect of his gaze on the sleeping
brute. The same is true in less degree of most
Indians and woodsmen, and of many sensitive
women and children, as you may prove for your-
self. Go into a room where a sensitive or "high-
strung" person is taking a nap — not sleeping

[50]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

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 sleep-
er will show that he feels your look and is try-
ing subconsciously to avoid it. The awakening,
whether of animals or of men, does not always
follow our look, most fortunately, b.ut it happens
frequently enough under varying conditions to
put the explanation of chance entirely out of
the question.

When I was a child I used to sit long hours in
the woods alone, partly for love of the breathing
solitude, and partly for getting acquainted with
wild birds or beasts, which showed no fear of me
when they found me quiet. At such times I often
found within myself an impression which I ex-
pressed 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 inquisi-
tively. As I grew older the "feel" of living things
grew dimmer; yet many times in later years, when

How Animals Talk

I have been in the wilderness alone, I have ex-
perienced the same impression of being watched
or followed, and so often has it proved a true
warning that I still trust it and act upon it, even
when my eyes see nothing unusual and my ears
hear nothing but their own ringing in the silence.

I remember once, when I was sitting on the
shore of a lake at twilight, that I began to have
an increasing impression that some living thing
unseen was near me. At first I neglected it, for
I had my eyes on a deer that interested me greatly;
but the feeling grew stronger till I obeyed it and
rose to my feet. At the first motion came a
startling woof! and from some bushes close behind
me a bear jumped away for the woods. No doubt
he had been there some time, watching me or
creeping nearer, knowing that I was alive, but
completely puzzled by my shapelessness and lack
of action. A similar thing has happened several
times, in other places and with other animals, and
always at a moment when I was most in harmony
with the environment and a sharer of its deep
tranquillity.1

As a child this faculty (if such it be) was as
natural as anything else in life; for in childhood
we take the world as we find it in personal ex-
perience, and nothing is especially wonderful

1 For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196-199.

[52]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

where all is wonder. I then thought no more of
feeling the presence of an animal than of hearing
him walk when I could not see him; but as I grew
older the experience seemed a little odd or "queer,"
and I never spoke of it to any one till I discovered,
first, that the faculty seems to be common among
animals, and second, that some Indians (not all)
have it and regard it as the most natural thing in
the world. Here is how the latter discovery came
about :

Simmo and I were calling moose from a lake
one moonlit night, with a silent canoe under us,
dark evergreen woods at our back, and a little
ghost of a beaver-meadow, vague, misty, shadow-
filled, immediately before our eyes yet seeming as
remote as any drifting cloud. To our repeated
call no answer was returned ; then we allowed the
canoe to drift ashore where it would, and sat
listening to the vast silence. I was brought back
from my absorption in the fragrance, the harmony,
the infinite stillness of the night by feeling the
canoe shake and hearing Simmo whisper, "Some-
t'ing near. Look out !"

Now in a silence like that, the tense, living
silence of the wilderness at night, one's ears are
as full of tricks as a puckzvudgie, who is one of the
mischievous fairy-folk of the Indians. The whine
of a mosquito sounds across the whole lake; or

5 [S3]

How Animals Talk

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 bor-
derland between the real and the imaginary; so
presently I turned to Simmo and whispered, "You
hear him?"

The Indian shook his head. "No hear-um;
just feel-um," he said; and again we settled down
to watch. For several minutes we questioned the
woods, the lake, the meadow; but nothing stirred,
not a sound broke the painful quiet, the while
we both felt strongly that some living thing was
near us. Then a shadow moved from the darker
shadow of an upturned root, only a few yards away,
and a great bull stood alert on the open shore.

I thought then, and I still think, that besides our
ordinary five senses we have a finer faculty which
I must call, for lack of a better term, the sense of
presence; and I explain it on the assumption that
every life recognizes and attracts every other life
by some occult force, as dead matter (if there be
such a thing) attracts all other matter by the
mysterious force of gravitation.'

[54]

/t shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned root — and
•**• a great buck stood alert on the open shore.

Chumfo, the Super-sense

Doubtless I have been many times watched in
the woods when I did not know or feel it; and
certainly I have often had my eyes upon an un-
conscious bird or beast when, though I fancied he
grew uneasy under my scrutiny, he did not have
enough sense of danger to run away — possibly
because no real danger threatened him, the eyes
that looked upon him being friendly or merely
curious.

Once on a hardwood ridge I came upon a buck
lying asleep in open timber, and stood with my
back against a great sugar-maple, observing him
for five or six minutes before he stirred. No, I
was not trying to awaken him by a look, or to
stage any other experiment. I was simply enjoy-
ing 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 sud-
denly his head turned to me; his eyes snapped
wide open, and they were looking straight into
mine. Apparently his feeling or subconscious per-
ception had warned him where danger was; but
still his eyes could not recognize it, standing there

[55]

How Animals Talk

in plain sight. For to stand motionless without
concealment is often the best way to deceive a
wild animal, which habitually associates life with
motion.

No more drowsiness for that buck! He was
startled, plainly enough; but he rose to his feet
very stealthily, not stirring a leaf, and stood at
tense attention. When he turned his head to
look over his shoulder behind him I raised my
field-glass, for I wanted to read his thought, if
possible, in his eyes. As he turned his gaze my
way again his nose seemed to sweep my face. It
rested there a moment full on the lens of my glass,
moved on, and returned for a longer inspection.
Then he glided past, still without recognizing me,
testing the air at every springy step, harking this
way, looking that way, and disappearing at last
as if he trod on eggs.

From such experiences I judge that the feeling
of unsensed danger, or the more subtle feel of a
living thing, is as variable in the animals as are
their instincts or their social habits. It may be
dull in one creature and keen in another of the
same species, or alternately awake and asleep in
the same creature; but there is no longer any
doubt in my mind that it is a widespread gift
among birds and beasts. When it appears occa-
sionally among men, therefore, it is to be regarded

[561

Chumfo, the Super-sense

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 primi-
tive 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 marvel-
ous, as geometry appears to an Eskimo, because
we do not yet understand its law or working
principle.

Among savage tribes, who live a natural out-
door life in close contact with nature, the percep-
tion of danger or of persons beyond the ordinary
sense range is much more common than among
civilized folk. Almost every explorer and mis-
sionary 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 ob-
server of these people has at last offered an ex-
planation of the matter, with many other impres-
sions of native philosophy, in a work to which he
gives the suggestive title of Thinking Black. Of
the scores of books on Africa which I have read,

[571

How Animals Talk

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 "super-
stitions,"— as if any rite or habit could be under-
stood without first understanding the philosophy
of life from which it sprang, as a flower from a
hidden seed.

This rare observer, who knows how the native
thinks because he perfectly understands the na-
tive language, tells us1 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.

Crawford, Thinking Black (1904).
[58]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

According to these natives, every natural animal,
man included, has the physical gifts of touch,
sight, hearing, taste, smell, and chumfo. I must
still use the native term because it cannot be
translated, because it implies all that we mean by
instinct, intuitive or absolute knowledge and (a
thing which no other psychology has even hint-
ed at) the process by which such knowledge is
acquired.

This chumfo is not a sixth or extra sense, as we
assume, but rather the unity or perfect co-ordina-
tion of the five senses at their highest point. I
may illustrate the matter this way, still following
Crawford, whose record contains many curious
bits of observation, savage philosophy, woods lore
and animal lore, many of them written by the
camp-fire and all jumbled together pell-mell:

For ordinary perception at near distances the
eye or the ear is sufficient, and while engaged in
any near or obvious matter the five senses work
independently, each busy with its own function.
But when such observation is ended or at fault,
and the man retreats, as it were, into his inner self,
then in the quiet all the senses merge and harmo-
nize into a single perfect instrument of perception.
(Here, in native dress, is nothing more or less than
the psychologist's subconscious self, with its mys-
terious working.) At such moments the whole

[59]

How Animals Talk

animal or the whole man, not his brain and senses
alone, becomes sensitive to the most delicate im-
pressions, to inaudible sounds or vibrations, to
unseen colors, to unsmelled odors or intangible
qualities, — to a multitude of subtle messages from
the external world, which are ordinarily unnoticed
because the senses are ordinarily separate, each
occupied with its particular message. So when
a sleeping animal is suddenly aware that he must
be alert, he does not learn of approaching danger
through his ears or nose, but through chumfo,
through the perfect co-ordination of all his senses
working together as one. In the same way a
wandering black man always knows where his hut
or camp is; he holds his course on the darkest
night, finds his way through a vast jungle, goes
back to any spot in it where he left something, and
often astonishes African travelers by getting wind
of their doings while they are yet far distant.

Such is the native philosophy; and the striking
feature of it is, that it is not superstitious but
keenly observant, not ignorant but rational and
scientific, since it seems to anticipate our latest
biological discoveries, or rather, as we shall see,
a philosophy which rests upon biological science
as a foundation.

Perhaps the first suggestion that the native may
have reason in his theory comes from the extraor-

[60]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

dinary sensitiveness of certain blind people, who
walk confidently about a cluttered room, or who
sort the family linen after it returns from the
laundry. These blind people say, and think, that
they avoid objects by feeling the increasing air
pressure as they approach, or that they sort the
family linen by smell; but it appears more likely
that a greater unity and refinement of all their
senses results from their living in darkness.

That our human senses have unused possibili-
ties, 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, instinc-
tively, absolutely; and then by our ear or our
judgment we strive to verify our first chumfo
impression.

As a specific instance, you are lying half asleep
at night when a faint, strange sound breaks in
upon your consciousness. If you act naturally
now, you will nine times out of ten locate the sound

[61]

How Animals Talk

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 dis-
turbance. Or you are traveling along a lonely lane
at night, more alive than you commonly are, when
a sudden cry breaks out of the darkness. It lasts
but a fraction of a second and is gone ; yet in that
fleeting instant you have learned three things : you
know the direction of the cry; you know, though
you never heard it before, whether it is a loud
cry from a distance or a faint cry from near at
hand; and you are so sure of its exact location
that you go to a certain spot, whether near or far,
and say, "That cry sounded here."

So much if you act naturally ; but if you depend
on your ears or judgment, as men are apt to do,
then you are in for a long chase before you locate
the cry of a bird or a beast or a lost child in the
night.

It is easy to make mistakes here, for we are so
cumbered by artificial habits that it is difficult to
follow any purely natural process; but our trail
becomes clearer when we study the matter of
hearing among the brutes. Thus, your dog is lying
asleep by the fire when a faint noise or footstep
sounds outside. Sometimes, indeed, there is no
audible sound at all when he springs to his feet;

[62]

Chumfo y the Super-sense

but no sooner is the door opened for him than he is
around the house and away, heading as straight
for the disturbance as if he knew, as he probably
does, exactly where to find it. Yet your dog is,
I repeat, a very dull creature in comparison with
his wild kindred. Their ability to locate a sound
is almost unbelievable, not because they have more
delicate ears (for the human ear is much finer, being
sensitive to a thousand inflections, tones, harmonies,
which are meaningless to the brute), but because
of what the Blacks call their better chumfo or what
we thoughtlessly call their stronger instincts.

This has been strongly impressed upon me at
times when I have tried to call a moose in the
wilderness. If you seek these animals far back
where they are never hunted — a difficult matter
nowadays — the bulls answer readily enough, or
sometimes too readily, as when one big brute
chased me to my canoe and gave me a hatless run
for it ; but in a much-hunted region they are very
shy and come warily to a call. The best way to
see them in such a place is to call a few times
at night, or until you get an answer, and then go
quickly away before the bull comes near enough
to begin circling suspiciously. At daybreak you
are very apt to find him waiting; and the aston-
ishing thing is that he is waiting at the very spot
where you used your trumpet.

[63]

How Animals Talk

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 dis-
tance of two miles, or else have circled it on a
wide detour. That he should come such a dis-
tance through woods and waters, and pick the
right spot from a hundred others on either side,
seems to me not a matter of ears or experience
but of chumfo, or absolute knowledge.

Another and more interesting verification of the
chumfo philosophy is open to any man who will
go quietly through the big woods by moonlight,
putting himself back amid primal or animal con-
ditions, 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 over-
comes the first unnatural feeling of fear, to find

[64]

y the Super-sense

how alive he is, and h'ow much better he can
hear and smell than ever he dreamed. At such
a time one's whole body seems to become a deli-
cately poised instrument for receiving sense im-
pressions, and one's skin especially begins to tingle
and creep as it wakes from its long sleep. Nor is
this "creeping" of the skin strange or queer, as
we assume, but perfectly natural. The sensations
which we now ignorantly associate with fear of the
dark (a late and purely human development; the
animal knows it not) are in reality the sensations
of awakening life.

Possibly we may explain this supersensitiveness
of the skin, when life awakens in it once more and
it becomes for us another and finer instrument of
perception, by the simple biological fact that every
cell of the multitudes which make up the human
body has a more or less complete organization
within itself. Moreover, as late experiments have
shown, a cell or a tissue of cells will live and pros-
per in a suitable environment when completely
separated from the body of which it was once a
part. These human cells inherit certain charac-
teristics 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

[65!

How Animals Talk

given over when the animal (a collection of cells)
began to develop special organs of touch, sight,
and hearing; but there is no indication that the
original power of sensibility has ever been wholly
destroyed in any cell. It is, therefore, still within
the range of biological possibility that a man
should hear with his fingers or smell with his toes,
since every cell of both finger and toe once did a
work corresponding to the present functions of the
five animal senses.

Before you dismiss this as an idle or impossible
theory, try a simple experiment, which may open
your eyes to the reality of living things. Go to a
greenhouse and select a spot of bare earth under
a growing rose-bush. Examine the surface care-
fully, then brush and examine it again, to be sure
that not a root of any kind is present. Now
place a handful of good plant-food on the selected
spot, and go away to your own affairs. Return
in a week or so, brush aside your "bait," and there
before your eyes is a mass of white feeding-roots
where no root was before. In some way, deep
under the soil, the hungry cells have heard or
smelled or felt a rumor of food, and have headed
for it as surely as a dog follows his nose to his
dinner.

Do plants, then, know what they do when they
turn to the light, and is there something like con-

[66]

Ckwnfo, the Super-sense

sciousness 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 de-
veloped sensibility. At present some biologists
are beginning to assert, and confidently, though it
is but an opinion, that there is no dead matter in
the world; that the ultimate particles of which
matter is composed are all intensely alive. And if
alive, they must be sentient; that is, each must
have an infinitesimal degree of feeling or sense
perception.

To return from our speculation, and to illustrate
the chumfo faculty from human and animal ex-
perience: 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 in-
harmonious 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

[67]

How Animals Talk

spot, and in all that time I did not see him move
a muscle. He was apparently sound asleep. Sud-
denly he heaved up on his rheumatic legs, sniffed
the air alertly, and turned his head this way, that
way, as if wary of something.

The human labor had proceeded lazily, for the
day was warm ; there was no change in the environ-
ment, so far as I could discern ; the only sounds in
the air were the sleepy lap of wavelets and the
creaking of pulleys ; yet my instant thought was,
"That dog is frightened; but at what?" After
a few moments of watching he moved off a dozen
yards and threw himself flat on his side to sleep
again. His body was hardly relaxed when a
guy-rope parted, and the iron-bound mast of the
derrick crashed down on the wharf.

It was certainly "touch and go" for me; I felt
the wind of the thing as it fell, and was almost
knocked off the wharf; but I was not thinking
then of my own close call. With my interest at
high pitch I examined the mast, and found it
lying squarely athwart the impression left by the
dog in the dust of the road.

"Merely a coincidence," you say; which in-
dicates 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 no-

[68]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

tion) and wonder why luck should elect to light
on a worthless old dog and take no heed of what
seemed to me then a precious young man. But I
have since changed my mind; and here is one of
the many observations which made me change it.

Years afterward my Indian guide, Simmo, was
camped with a white man beside a salmon river.
It was a rough night, and a storm was roaring
over the big woods. For shelter they had built a
bark commoosie, and for comfort a fire of birch
logs. At about nine o'clock they turned in, each
wrapped in his blanket, and slept soundly but
lightly, as woodsmen do, after a long day on the
trail. Some time later — hours, probably, for the
fire was low, the storm hushed, the world intensely
still — the white man was awakened by a touch,
and opened his eyes to find his companion in a
tense, listening attitude.

"Bes' get out of here quick, 'fore somet'ing
come," said the Indian, and threw off his blanket.

"But why — what — how do you know?" queried
the white man, startled but doubting, for he had
listened and heard nothing.

The Indian, angered as an Indian of the woods
always is when you question or challenge his craft,
made an impatient gesture. "Don' know how;
don' know why; just know. Come!" he called
sharply, and the white man followed him away
6 [69]

How Animals Talk

from the camp toward the river, where it was
lighter. For several minutes they stood there,
like two alert animals, searching the dark woods
with all their senses; but nothing moved. The
white man was beginning another fool question
when there came a sudden dull crack, a booming
of air, as a huge yellow-birch stub toppled over the
fire and flattened the commoosie like a bubble.

"Dere! Das de feller mus' be comin'," said
Simmo. "By cosh, now, nex' time Injun tell you
one t'ing, pYaps you believe-um!" And, as if it
were the most natural thing in the world, he
stepped over death-and-destruction, kicked aside
some rubbish, and lay down to sleep where he was
before.

"How do I explain it?" I don't. I simply
recognize a fact which I cannot explain, and which
I will not blink by calling it another coincidence.
For the fact is, as I judge, that a few men and many
animals exercise some extra faculty which I do
not or cannot exercise, or have access to some
source of information which is closed to me.
When I question the gifted men or women who
possess this faculty, or what's-its-name, I find
that they are as much in the dark about it as I am.
They know certain things without knowing how
they learn; and the only word of explanation they
offer is that they "feel" thus and so — perhaps as

[70]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

a horse feels when he is holding the right direction
through a blinding snowstorm, as he does hold
it, steadily, surely, if you are wise enough not to
bother him with the reins or your opinions.

Simmo is one of these rare men. At one moment
he is a mere child, so guileless, so natural, so in-
nocent of worldly wisdom, that he is forever sur-
prising 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 philos-
opher, proclaiming a new or startling doctrine of
life in the sublimely unhampered way of Emerson,
who finished off objectors by saying, "I do not
argue; I know." But where Emerson gives you a
mystical word or a bare assertion which he cannot
possibly prove, Simmo has a disconcerting way of
establishing a challenged doctrine by a concrete
and undeniable fact.

One misty day when we were astray in the wil-
derness, he and I, we attempted to travel by get-

[71]

How Animals Talk

ting our compass bearings from the topmost twigs
of the evergreens, which slant mostly in one direc-
tion. 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-urn way myself." And he did
find it, and hold it even after darkness fell, by
instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have
been a matter of feeling rather than of sense or
observation, for his only explanation was, "Oh,
w'en I goin' right I feel good; but w'en I goin'
wrong I oneasy."

This natural feeling or impression of things be-
yond the range of sight, this extra sense, or churnfo
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 uneasi-
ness near the doomed birch-stub, might be ex-
plained 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 impend-
ing 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

[72]

Chumfo, the Super-sense

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 theo-
ries, 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 be-
lieve, a large part of animal communication goes
on continually.

That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps
more reasonable, if you follow this unblazed trail
a little farther.

IV

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 length-
ening 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

[74]

Natural Telepathy

the birds or the beasts may teach us of this interest-
ing matter.

It seems to be fairly well established that a few
men and women of uncommonly fine nervous or-
ganization (which means an uncommonly natural
or healthy organization) have the power of in-
fluencing 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 chal-
lenged, since there are scientists who deny tel-
epathy root and branch, as well as scientists who
believe in it implicitly; but I also know some-
thing 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 inves-
tigate an opinion, but to understand a fact.

To illustrate the matter by a personal experi-
ence: 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

[751

How Animals Talk

danger or sickness had befallen me. If the event
were to me serious or threatening, there was no
more doubt or uneasiness on my mother's part.
She would know within the hour that I was in
trouble of some kind, and would write or telegraph
to ask what was the matter.

It is commonly assumed that any such power
must be a little weird or uncanny; that it con-
tradicts 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. Never-
theless, I judge that telepathy is of itself wholly
natural; that it is a survival, an age-old inheri-
tance 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 some-
thing that very much resembles telepathy in fre-
quent 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

Natural Telepathy

inherit the animal sense of direction, and cultivate
and trust it till they are sure of their way in any
wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled
by artificial habit, go promptly astray whenever
they venture beyond beaten trails.

That the animals inherit this power of silent com-
munication over great distances is occasionally
manifest even among our half-natural domestic
creatures. For example, that same old setter of
mine, Don, who introduced us to our fascinating
subject, was left behind most unwillingly during
my terms at school ; but he always seemed to know
when I was on my way home. For months at a
stretch he would stay about the house, obeying
my mother perfectly, though she never liked a
dog; but on the day I was expected he would
leave the premises, paying no heed to orders, and
go to a commanding ledge beside the lane, where
he could overlook the highroad. Whatever the
hour of my coming, whether noon or midnight,
there I would find him waiting.

Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly,
having sent no word of my coming, my mother
missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours
later, when he did not return at his dinner-time
or answer her repeated call, she searched for him
and found him camped expectantly in the lane.
"Oho! wise dog," said she. "I understand now.

[771

How Animals Talk

Your master is coming home." And without a
doubt that it would soon be needed, she went and
made my room ready.

If the dog had been accustomed to spend his
loafing-time in the lane, one might thoughtlessly
account for his action by the accident or hit-or-
miss theory; but he was never seen to wait there
for any length of time except on the days when I
was expected. And once (unhappily the last time
Don ever came to meet his master) he was ob-
served 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 com-
ing, and my mother would take his dinner out to
him.

In many other ways Don gave the impression,
if not the evidence, that he was a "mind-reader."
He always knew when Saturday came, or a holi-
day, 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

[78]

Natural Telepathy

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 in-
stantly; he would be tugging at his leash before I
reached him, and no sooner was he free than he
was all over the yard in mad capers or making
lunatic attempts to drag me off on our common
holiday before breakfast.

That any dog of mine should obey my word,
doing gladly whatever I told him, was to be
expected ; or that in the field he should watch for
a motion of my hand and follow it instantly,
whether to charge or hold or come in or cast left
or right, was a simple matter of training; but
that this particular dog should, unknown to me,
enter into my very feeling, was certainly not the
result of education, and probably not of sight or
sense, as we ordinarily understand the terms.
When we were together of an evening before the
fire, so long as I was working or pleasantly read-
ing 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

[791

How Animals Talk

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 inex-
pressibly fine and loyal and wistful in their ques-
tioning deeps.

Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to
enter into my moods by some subtle, mysterious
perception for which I have no name, and no
explanation save the obvious one — that a man's
will or emotion may fill a room with waves or
vibration as real as those streaming from a fire or
a lighted candle, and that normal animals have
some unused bodily faculty for receiving precisely
such messages or vibrations. But we are not yet
quite ready for that part of our trail; it will come
later, when we can follow it with more under-
standing.

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:

[80]

Natural Telepathy

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 accu-
rately. 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 re-
turned 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 neighbor-
hood, 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

How Animals Talk

tested Watch, and observed him to take the road
within a few moments of the time when his master
left his office or building operations in the town,
some three or four miles away.

Thus far the record is clear and straight, but
there is one important matter which my friend
overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when
they deal with nature, their mistake being to
regard animals as featureless members of a class
or species rather than as individuals. The dog's
master always came or went in a wagon drawn
by a quiet old horse, and upon inquiry I found
that between Watch and the horse was a bond of
comradeship, such as often exists between two
domestic animals of different species. Thus, the
dog often preferred to sleep in the stall near his
big chum, or would accompany him to the pasture
when he was turned loose, and would always
stand by, as if overlooking the operation, when
the horse was being harnessed. It may well be,
therefore, that it was from the horse rather than
from the man that Watch received notice when
heads were turned homeward; but of the fact that
some kind of telepathic communication passed
between two members of the trio there is no
reasonable doubt.

Some of my readers may make objection at
this point that, though something like telepathic

[82!

Natural Telepathy

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 fre-
quently, more obviously, and so spare themselves
manifold discomforts or misunderstandings?"

Such an objection is natural enough, since we
judge as we live, mostly by habit; but it has no
validity, I think, and for two reasons. First,
because such animals as we have thus far seen
exercising the faculty (and they are but a few
out of many) are apparently normal and sensible
beasts, precisely like their less-gifted fellows ; and
second, because the telepathic power itself, when
one examines it without prejudice, appears to be
wholly natural, and sane or simple as the power
of thought, even of such rudimentary thought as
may be exercised in an animal's head. As for
emotions, more intense and penetrating than any
thought, it is hardly to be questioned that a man's
fear or panic may flow through his knees into the
horse he is riding, or that emotional excitement
may spread through a crowd of men without vis-
ible or audible expression. That a dog should re-
ceive a wordless message or impulse from his
master at a distance of three or four miles is,
fundamentally, no more unnatural than that one

[83]

How Animals Talk

man should feel another's mood at a distance
of three or four feet. Whether we can explain
the phenomenon on strictly biological or scientific
grounds is another matter.

I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go
cat-footedly when I enter that strange garret. I
look with wonder on these patient, unemotional
men who care nothing for a bear or an eagle, but
who creep lower and ever lower in the scale of
living things, searching with penetrating looks
among infinitesimal microbes for the secret that
shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us
what life is. And because man is everywhere the
same, watching these exploring biologists I re-
member 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 view-
point, I think, from which telepathy or thought-
transference would appear as natural, as in-
evitable, as the forthgoing of light from a burning
lamp.

Thus, historically there was a time when the
living cell, or the cell-of-life, as one biologist calls it
with rare distinction, was sensitive only to pres-

[84]

Natural Telepathy

sure ; 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, imagina-
tively, was the sentient cell's first knowledge, the
result of a sense of touch distributed throughout
its protecting surface.

Long afterward came a time when the living cell,
multiplied now a millionfold, began to develop
special sense-organs, each a modification of its
rudimentary sense of touch; one to receive vi-
brations 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 perad-
venture 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, ap-
7 [85]

How Animals Talk

parently, was the age-long process from the sen-
tient cell to the living man.

Since we are following a different trail, this is
hardly the time or place to face the question how
this development from mere living to conscious
life took place, even if one were wise or rash
enough to grapple with the final problem of
evolution. Yet it may not be amiss while we
"rest a pipe," as the voyageurs say, to point out
that, of the two possible answers to our question
(aside from the convenient and restful answer that
God made things so), only one, curiously enough,
has thus far been considered by our physical
scientists. The thousand books and theories of
evolution which one reads are all reducible to this
elementary proposition: that the simple things of
life became complex by inner necessity. In other
words, an eye became an eye, or an oak an oak,
or a man a man, simply because each must de-
velop according to the inner law of its being.

That may be true, though the all-compelling
"inner law" is still only a vague assumption, and
the mystery of its origin is untouched ; but why
not by outer compulsion as reasonably as by in-
ner 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 par-

[86J

Natural Telepathy

tides 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 com-
prehend that particular mystery by developing a
thought and emotion of its own.

I do not say that this is the right answer; I
mention it merely as a speculative possibility, in
order to get our alleged scientific mind out of its
deep rut of habit by showing that every road has
two sides, though a man habitually use only one;
and that Reason or Law or God, or whatever you
choose to call the ultimate mainspring of life, is
quite as apt to be found on one side of the road as
on the other. Inner necessity is not a whit more
logical or more explanatory than external force or
compulsion when we face the simple fact that an
animal now sees and feels in the light instead of
merely existing in darkness, or that primitive cells
which were dimly sentient have now become as
thinking gods, knowing good and evil.

What this thought of ours is we do not know.
Beyond the fact that we have it and use it, thought
still remains a profound mystery. That it is a
living force of some kind; that it projects itself

[87]

How Animals Talk

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 af-
fects them, — all this is reasonably clear and cer-
tain. 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, pre-
vents us from viewing it frankly.

As a purely speculative consummation, therefore,
the time may come when telepathy shall appear
as the natural or perfect communication among
enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or
evolutionary makeshift. But that beckons us away
to an imaginative flight among the clouds, and on
the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow.

[88]

Natural Telepathy

The question why our dogs, if they have the
faculty of receiving a master's message at a dis-
tance, 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 judg-
ments; which partly explains why one setter
readily follows his master's word or hand, or en-
ters into 'his mood, while another remains hope-
lessly dumb or unresponsive. The telepathic fac-
ulty 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 pre-
natal influence or control were still at work.

For example, I have occasionally had the good

[89]

How Animals Talk

luck to observe a she-wolf leading her pack across
the white expanse of a frozen lake in winter; and
at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to
run after any moving object that attracts their
attention. If a youngster breaks away to rush
an animal that he sees moving in the woods (once
that moving animal was myself), the mother heads
him instantly if he is close to her ; but if he is off
before she can check him by a motion of her ears
or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength
in chasing him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her
head high, and looks steadily at the running cub.
Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look
recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack.
If the moving object be proper game afoot, the
mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it, while
the pack follows stealthily behind her on either
side; but if the distant object be a moose or a
man, or anything else that a wolf must not meddle
with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her
way without a sound, and the errant cub falls into
place as if he had understood her silent command.
You may observe the same phenomenon of silent
order and ready obedience nearer home, if you
have patience to watch day after day at a burrow
of young foxes. I have spent hours by different
dens, and have repeatedly witnessed what seemed
to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet

[90]

Natural Telepathy

heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of
any kind. That audible communication comes
later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves ;
and then you will often hear the mother's querulous
squall or the cubs' impatient crying when they are
separated in the dark woods. While the den is
their home (they seldom enter it after they once
roam abroad) silence is the rule, and that silence is
most eloquent. For hours at a stretch the cubs
romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some
stalking imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others
challenging their mates to mock fights or mock
hunting; and the most striking feature of the
exercise, after you have become familiar with the
fascinating little creatures, is that the old vixen,
who lies apart where she can overlook the play and
the neighborhood, seems to have the family under
perfect control at every instant, though never a
word is uttered.

That some kind of communication passes among
these intelligent little brutes is constantly evident ;
but it is without voice or language. Now and
then, when a cub's capers lead him too far from
the den, the vixen lifts her head to look at him
intently; and somehow that look has the same
effect as the she-wolf's silent call; it stops the cub
as if she had sent a cry or a messenger after him.
If that happened once, you might overlook it as a

[91]

How Animals Talk

matter of mere chance ; but it happens again and
again, and always in the same challenging way.
The eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as
if he had heard a command, catches the vixen's
look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the
whistle.

As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the
evening comes when the mother must go mousing
in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her feet.
Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close,
their heads all upturned to the greater head that
bends to them, and there they stand in mute intent-
ness, as if the mother were speaking and the cubs
listening. For a brief interval that tense scene
endures, exquisitely impressive, while you strain
your senses to catch its meaning. There is no
sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear.
Then the cubs scamper quickly into the burrow;
the mother, without once looking back, slips away
into the shadowy twilight. At the den's mouth a
foxy little face appears, its nostrils twitching, its
eyes following a moving shadow in the distance.
When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the
face draws back, and the wild hillside is wholly
silent and deserted.

You can go home now. The vixen may be hours
on her hunting, but not a cub will again show
his nose until she returns and calls him. If a

[92]

Natural Telepathy

human mother could exercise such silent, perfect
discipline, or leave the house with the certainty
that four or five lively youngsters would keep out
of danger or mischief as completely as young fox
cubs keep out of it, raising children might more
resemble "one grand sweet song" than it does at
present.

So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts,
the faculty of silent communication occurs most
commonly among those that are gregarious or
strongly social in their habits. The timber-
wolves of the North are the first examples that oc-
cur 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 use-
less to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method; that
your meeting with him is a matter of chance or
rare accident; that not only has he marvelously
keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a nose
that cannot be deceived, but he can also "feel" a
danger which is hidden from sight or smell or
hearing. Such is the Indian verdict; and I have
followed wolves often and vainly enough to have
some sympathy with it.

The cunning of these animals would be uncanny
if it were merely cunning; but it is naturally
explained, I think, on the assumption that wolves,

[93]

How Animals Talk

more than most other brutes, receive silent warn-
ings 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 con-
fident 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 wolfs cunning
lies deeper than his five senses.
Another lupine trait which first surprised and

[94]

Natural Telepathy

then challenged my woodcraft is this: in the
winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run
in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always
seems to know where his mates are hunting or
idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The pack
is made up of his family relatives, younger or older,
all mothered by the same she-wolf; and by some
bond or attraction or silent communication he can
go straight to them at any hour of the day or night,
though he may not have seen them for a week,
and they have wandered over countless miles of
wilderness in the interim.

We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall
make it clear presently), on the simple ground
that the wolves, though incurable rovers, have
bounds beyond which they seldom pass; that they
return on their course with more or less regularity;
and that in traveling, as distinct from hunting,
they always follow definite runways, like the
foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary
wolf might remember that the pack was due in a
certain region on a certain day, and by going to
that region and putting his nose to the runways he
could quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows.
There is nothing occult in such a process; it is a
plain matter of brain and nose.

Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough;
too reasonable, in fact, since a brute probably

[951

How Animals Talk

acts more intuitively and less rationally; but it
does not account for the amazing certainty of a
wounded wolf when separated from his pack. He
always does separate, by the way; not because the
others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature,
but because every stricken bird or beast seeks
instinctively to be alone and quiet while his hurt
is healing. I have followed with keen interest the
doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two
days and nights in a sheltered den, after which he
rose from his bed and went straight as a bee's
flight to where his pack had killed a buck and
left plenty of venison behind them.

In this case it is possible to limit the time of the
wounded wolfs 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 hunt-
ing 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

[96]

Natural Telepathy

region, some eight or ten straight miles away, and
perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly
travel.

If you contend that this wounded wolf must
have known where the meat was by the howling
of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be
true in one case, but certainly not in the other.
For by great good luck I was near the pack, follow-
ing 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 fol-
lowed, killed and ate in silence, as wolves com-
monly do, their howling being a thing apart from
their hunting. The wounded wolf was then far
away, with miles of densely wooded hills and val-
leys between him and his pack.

Do you ask, "How was it possible to know all
this?" From the story the snow told. At day-
break I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and
was following it stealthily, with many a cautious
detour 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,

[97]

How Animals Talk

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 no-
ticed 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 show-shoes that I never got a second
glimpse of him.

By that time I was bound to know, if possible,
how the limper happened to find this second deer
for his comfort ; so I picked up his incoming trail
and ran it clear back to his den under the wind-
fall, 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

[98]

Natural Telepathy

else that a solitary wolf may be so in touch with
his pack-mates that he knows not only where they
are, but also, in a general way, what they are doing.

In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou
is rather a witless brute; but he, too, has his
"uncanny" moods, and one who patiently follows
him, with deeper interest in his anima than in his
antlered head, finds him frequently doing some
odd or puzzling thing which may indicate a per-
ception more subtle than that of his dull eyes or
keen ears or almost perfect nose. Here is one
example of Megaleep's peculiar way:

I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day
on the barrens (treeless plains or bogs) of the
Renous River in New Brunswick. For hours I
had followed through alternate thick timber and
open bog without alarming or even seeing my
game. The animals were plainly on the move,
perhaps changing their feeding-ground ; and when
Megaleep begins to wander no man can say where
he will go, or where stop, or what he is likely to
do next. Once, after trailing him eight or ten
miles, twice jumping him, I met him head-on,
coming briskly back in his own tracks, as if to see
what was following him. From the trail I read
that there were a dozen animals in the herd, and
that one poor wounded brute lagged continually
behind the others. He was going on three legs;

[99l

How Animals Talk

his right forefoot, the bone above it shattered by
some blundering hunter's bullet, swung help-
lessly as he hobbled along, leaving its pathetic
record in the snow.

On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of
barrens, halting to search the trail ahead, my eye
caught a motion far across the open, and through
the field-glass I saw my herd for the first time,
resting unsuspiciously on the farther edge of the
barren, a full mile or more away. From my feet
the trail led down through a dense fringe of ever-
green, and then straight out across the level plain.
A few of the caribou were lying down; others
moved lazily in or out of the forest that shut in the
barren on that side; and as I watched them two
animals, yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads
together for a pushing match, like domestic calves
at play.

Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping
near the edge of it but always out of sight in the
evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary caribou
trail, the trail of the cripple, who had evidently
wearied and turned aside to rest, perhaps knowing
that his herd was near the end of its journey.
A little farther on I jumped him out of a fir
thicket, and watched him a moment as he hobbled
deeper into the woods, heading away to the west.
The course surprised me a little, for his mates

[100]

Natural Telepathy

were northward; and at the thought I quickly
found an opening in the cover and turned my
glass upon the other caribou. Already they were
in wild alarm. For a brief interval they ran
about confusedly, or stood tense as they searched
the plain and the surrounding woods for the source
of danger; then they pushed their noses out and
racked away at a marvelous pace, crossing the
barren diagonally toward me and smashing into
the woods a short distance ahead, following a
course which must soon bring them and their
wounded mate together. If I were dealing with
people, I might say confidently that they were bent
on finding out what the alarm was about; but as I
have no means of knowing the caribou motive, I
can only say that the two trails ran straight as a
string through the timber to a meeting-point on
the edge of another barren to the westward.

If you would reasonably explain the matter,
remember that these startled animals were far away
from me ; that the cripple and myself were both
hidden from their eyes, and that I was moving up-
wind 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
8 [ ioi ]

How Animals Talk

silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the
last; but it was the only time when I could trace
the whole process without break or question from
beginning to end. And when, to test the matter
to the bottom, I ran the trail of the herd back
to where they had been resting, there was no
track of man or beast in the surrounding woods
to account for their flight.

One may explain this as a mere coincidence,
which is not an explanation; or call it another
example of the fact that wild animals are "queer,"
which is not a fact; but in my own mind every
action of the caribou and all the circumstances
point to a different conclusion — namely, that the
fear or warning or impulse of one animal was
instantly transferred to others at a distance. I
think, also, that the process was not wholly un-
conscious or subconscious, but that one animal
sent forth his warning and the others acted upon it
more or less intelligently. This last is a mere
assumption, however, which cannot be proved till
we learn to live in an animal's skin.

It is true that the event often befalls otherwise,
since you may jump one animal without alarming
others of the same herd ; and it is possible that the
degree or quality of the alarm has something to
do with its carrying power, as we feel the intense
emotion of a friend more quickly than his ordinary

f!02l

rhey stood tense as they searched the plain and surrounding woods
for the source of danger.

Natural Telepathy

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 with-
out 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, suspi-
ciously, in obedience to some warning which
seemed to spread through the woods like a
contagion.

The latter experience is common enough among
hunters of big game, who are often at a loss to
explain the sudden flight of animals that a moment
ago, under precisely the same outward influences,
were feeding or resting without suspicion. Thus,
you may be stalking a big herd of elk, or wapiti,
which are spread out loosely over half a mountain-
side. 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

[103]

How Animals Talk

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 im-
patiently 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 some-
where else, when without cry or grunt or warning
of any kind that ears can hear she turns and
glides rapidly away.

Now if you value animal lore above stuffed
skins, or experience above the babble of hunting
naturalists, forget the big bull and his greed-
stirring antlers; scramble quickly to the highest
outlook at hand, and use your eyes. No alarm
has been sounded; the vast silence is unbroken;
yet for some mysterious reason the whole herd is
suddenly on the move. To your right, to your
left, near at hand or far away, bushes quiver or
jump; alert brown forms appear or vanish like
shadows, all silent and all heading in the direction
taken by the first sentinel. One moment there
are scores of elk in sight, feeding or resting

[104]

Natural Telepathy

quietly; the next they are gone and the great
hillside is lifeless. The thrill of that silent, mov-
ing drama has more wisdom in it, yes, and more
pleasure, than the crash of your barbarous rifle
or the convulsive kicking of a stricken beast that
knows not why you should kill him.

Such is the experience, known to almost every
elk-hunter who has learned that life is more inter-
esting than death; and I know nothing of deer
nature to explain it save this — that the whole herd
has suddenly felt and understood the silent impulse
to go, and has obeyed it without a question, as the
young wolf or fox cub obeys the silent return call
of his watchful mother.

Such impulses seem to be more common and
more dependable among the whales, which have
rudimentary or imperfect sense-organs, but which
are nevertheless delicately sensitive to external
impressions, to the approach of unseen danger, to
the movements of the tiny creatures on which they
feed, to changes of wind or tide and to a falling
barometer, as if nature had given them a first-
class feeling apparatus of some kind to make up
for their poor eyes and ears. Repeatedly have
I been struck by this extraordinary sensitiveness
when watching the monstrous creatures feeding
with the tide in one of the great bays of the New-
foundland or the Labrador coast. If I lowered a

[105]

How Animals Talk

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 puz-
zling thing: at the instant my whale took alarm
every other whale of the same species seemed to
be moved by the same impulse, sounding when the
first sounded, or else turning with him to head for
the open sea.

A score of times I tried the experiment, and
commonly, but not invariably, with the same re-
sult. I would sight a few leviathans playing or
feeding, shooting up from the deep, breaching half
their length out of water to fall back with a
tremendous souse; and through my glasses I would
pick up others here or there in the same bay.
Selecting a certain whale, I would glide rapidly
toward him, crouching low in the dory and sculling
silently by means of an oar over the stern. By
some odd channel of perception (not by sight, cer-
tainly, 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.

[106]

Natural Telepathy

This observation of mine is not unique, as I
supposed, for later I heard it echoed as a matter
of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I talked
with my friend, Captain Rule, about the ways of
the great creatures he had followed in the old
whaling-days, he said, "The queerest habit of a
whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul of,
was this: when I got my boat close enough to a
sperm-whale to put an iron into him, every other
sperm-whale within ten miles would turn flukes,
as if he had been harpooned, too." But he added
that he had not noticed the same contagion of
alarm, not in the same striking or instantaneous
way, when hunting the right or Greenland whale
— perhaps because the latter is, as a rule, more
solitary in its habits.

Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the
observation of most folk ; but the winter birds in
your own yard may some time give you a hint, at
least, of the same mysterious transference of an
impulse over wide distances. When you scatter
food for them during a cold snap or after a storm
(it is better not to feed them regularly, I think,
especially in mild weather when their proper food
is not covered with snow) your bounty is at first
neglected except by the house sparrows and
starlings. Unlike our native birds, these im-
ported foreigners are easily "pauperized," seeking

[107]

How Animals Talk

no food for themselves so long as you take care of
them. They keep tabs on you, also, waiting pa-
tiently 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 sud-
denly learn that food was here ?

The answer to that question is simple, and en-
tirely "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

[108]

Natural Telepathy

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 be-
fore 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 ex-
planation of these rare visitors is that either wild
birds know how to send forth a silent food-call or,
more likely, that the excitement of feeding birds
spreads powerfully outward, and is felt by other
starving birds, alert and sensitive, at a distance
beyond all possible range of sight or hearing. By
no other hypothesis can I account for the fact that
certain wild birds make their appearance in my
yard at a moment when a number of other birds
are eagerly feeding, and at no other time, though
I watch for them from one year's end to another.
Like every other explanation, whether of stars
[109]

How Animals Talk

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 siknt
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 as-
tronomer 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.

THIS is a chapter on the wing drill of birds, the
swarming of bees, the panics and unseasonal
migrations of larger or smaller beasts, and other
curious phenomena in which the wild creatures of
a flock or herd all act in unison, doing the same
thing at the same time, as if governed by a single
will rather than by individual motives. If it
should turn out that the single will were expressed
in a voice or cry, or even in a projected impulse,
then are we again face to face with our problem of
animal communication.

Of the fact of collective action there is no doubt,
many naturalists having witnessed it ; and there is
also a strictly orthodox explanation. Thus, when

[in]

How Animals Talk

you see a large flock of crows "drilling" in the
spring or autumn, rising or falling or wheeling all
together with marvelous precision, the ornitholo-
gists resolve the matter by saying that the many
crows act as one crow because they follow a "col-
lective impulse"; that is, because the same im-
pulse to rise or fall or wheel seizes upon them all
at precisely the same moment. And this they tell
you quite simply, as if pointing out an obvious
fact of natural history, when in reality they are
showing you the rarest chimera that ever looked
out of a vacuum.

Now the wonderful wing drill of certain birds
has something in it which I cannot quite fathom
or understand, not even with a miracle of collective
impulse to help me; yet I have observed two
characteristics of the ordered flight which may help
to dispel the fog of assumption that now envelops
it. The first is, that the drill is seen only when
an uncommonly large number of birds of the same
kind are gathered together, on a sunny day of
early spring, as a rule, or in the perfection of
autumn weather.

The starlings1 furnish us an excellent example

1 1 am speaking of starlings as they now appear in southern New Eng-
land. They were brought from Europe a few years ago, and are multi-
plying 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.

[112]

The Swarm Spirit

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 cease-
less 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 flash of their ten-thousand
wings when they turn is like the flicker of a signal-
glass in the sun.

The same characteristic of uncommon numbers
holds true of the crows and, indeed, of all other
species of birds, save one, that ever practise the
wing drill. Wild geese when in small companies,
each a family unit, have a regular and beautiful

[H3l

How Animals Talk

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 sea-
gulls, which sometimes gather in uncounted num-
bers, but which do not, apparently, have the same
motive that leads crows or starlings to unite in a
kind of rhythmic air-dance on periodic occasions.
A second marked characteristic of the wing drill
is that it is invariably a manifestation of play or
sport, and that the individual birds, though they
keep the order of the play marvelously well, show
in their looks and voices a suppressed emotional
excitement. The drill is never seen when birds
are migrating or feeding or fleeing from danger,
though thousands of them may be together at such
a time, but only when they assemble in a spirit of
fun or exercise, and their bodily needs are satisfied,
and the weather or the barometer is just right,
and no enemy is near to trouble them. Whatever
their motive or impulse, therefore, it is certainly
not universal or even widespread among the birds,
since most of them do not practise the drill;
nor is it in the least like that mysterious impulse
which suddenly sets all the squirrels of a region in

[114]

The Swarm Spirit

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, pre-
cisely as they were before.

The drill is seen at its best among the plover,
I think; and, curiously enough, these are the only
birds I know that practise it frequently, in small
or large numbers and in all weathers. I have often
watched a flock come sweeping in to my decoys,
gurgling like a thousand fifes with bubbles in them ;
and never have I met these perfectly drilled birds,
which stay with us but a few hours on their rapid
journey from the far north to the far south, without
renewed wonder at their wildness, their tameness,
their incomprehensible ways. That you may vis-
ualize our problem before I venture an explana-
tion, here is what you may see if you can forget
your gun to observe nature with a deeper interest:

You have risen soon after midnight, called by
the storm and the shrilling of passing plover, and
long before daylight you are waiting for the birds
on the burnt-over plain. Your "stand" is a hole
in the earth, hidden by a few berry-bushes; and
before you, at right angles with the course of the
storm (for plover always wheel to head into the

[US]

How Animals Talk

wind when they take the ground), are some scores
of rudely painted decoys. As the day breaks you
see against the east a motion as of wings, and your
call rings out wild and clear, to be echoed on the
instant. In response to your whistle the distant
motion grows wildly fantastic; it begins to whirl
and eddy, as if a wisp of fog were rolling swiftly
down-wind; only in some mysterious fashion the
fog holds together, and in it are curious flickerings.
Those are plover, certainly; no other birds have
that perfect unity of movement; and now, since
they are looking for the source of the call they
have just heard, you throw your cap in the air or
wave a handkerchief to attract attention. There
is an answering flash of white from the under side
of their wings as the plover catch your signal and
turn all at once to meet it. Here they come,
driving in at terrific speed straight at you!

It is better to stop calling now, because the
plover will soon see your decoys ; and these birds
when on the ground make no sound except a low,
pulsating whistle of welcome or recall. This is
uttered but seldom, and unless you can imitate it,
which is not likely, your whistling will do no good.
Besides, it could not possibly be heard. Listen to
that musical babel, and let your nerves dance to
it ! In all nature there is nothing to compare for
utter wildness with the fluting of incoming plover.

Fii61

The Swarm Spirit

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 in-
stantaneously that it makes you blink, there is a
change of some kind in every quivering pair of
wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are
sure that the plover are still coming, for you did not
see them turn ; but the lines grow smaller, dimmer,
and you know that every bird in the flock has
whirled, as if at command, and is now heading
straight away. You put your fingers to your lips
and send out the eery plover call again and again ;
but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better
whistling. The quivering lines are now all blurred
in one; with a final flicker they disappear below
a rise of ground; the birds are gone, and you
cease your vain calling. Then, when you are
thinking you will never see that flock again, a
cloud of wings shoot up from the plain against the
horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous
flight, not as a thousand individuals but as a unit,
and the lines grow larger, clearer, as the plover
come sweeping back to your decoys once more.

Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it re-
9 [117]

How Animals Talk

peatedly 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 im-
possible 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 de-
coys, and all the others copy his swift flight; for
in that case there must be succession or delay or
straggling in the turning, and the impression left
on the eye is not of succession, but of almost
perfect unity of movement.

The only other explanation of the plovers' action
is the one commonly found in the bird-books, to
which I have already briefly referred, and which
we must now examine more narrowly. It assumes
that all the birds of a migrating flock are moved
not by individual wills, but by a collective impulse
or instinct, which affects them all alike at the same
instant. In support of this favorite theory we
are told to consider the bees, which are said to
have no individual motives, and no need for them,
since they blindly follow a swarm or hive instinct

[n81

The Swarm Spirit

that makes them all precisely alike in their ac-
tions. 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 in-
centive.

This illustration of the hive is offered so con-
fidently and accepted so readily, as if it were an
axiom of natural history, that one hesitates to dis-
turb the ancient idol in its wonted seat. Yet one
might argue that any living impulse, whether in
bees or birds, must proceed from a living source,
and, if that be granted, speculate on the absorbing
business of a nature or a heaven that should be
perpetually interfering in behalf of every earthly
flock or swarm or herd by sending the appropriate
impulse at precisely the right moment. And when
our speculation is at an end, I submit the fact that,
when I have broken open a honey-tree in the woods,
one bee falls upon the sweets to gorge himself
withal, while another from the same swarm falls
angrily upon me and dies fighting; which seems to
upset the collective-impulse idol completely.

I must confess here that I know very little about
bees. They are still a mystery to me, and I would
rather keep silence about them until I find one bee
that I fancy I understand, or one man who offers
something better than a very hazy or mystical

How Animals Talk

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 per-
formed a few experiments — enough to convince
me that the collective-impulse theory does not
always hold true to fact even among our honey-
makers. Indeed, I doubt that it ever holds true,
or that there is in nature any such mysterious
thing as a swarm or flock or herd impulse.

In the first place, the bees of the same swarm do
not look alike or act alike except superficially; at
least I have not so observed them. Study the
heads or the feet of any two bees under a glass,
and you shall find as much variety as in the heads
or feet of any other two creatures of the same kind,
whether brute or human. The lines of difference
run smaller, to be sure ; but they are always there.
In action also the bees are variable; they do
marvelously wise things at one moment, or marvel-
ously 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;

[120]

The Swarm Spirit

but when by great ingenuity you do at last
make a trap so very simple that it seems any
creature with legs must walk out by the open
door, perhaps one bee in five will do the trick;
while the other four wait patiently until they die
for more simplicity.

Again, while your eye often sees unity of action
among the wild creatures, neither your reading nor
your own reason will ever reveal a scrap of positive
evidence that there is in nature any such con-
venient 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 "pro-
pensity" 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.

[121]

How Animals Talk

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 suc-
cessively; not because a swarm instinct impels
them to anger, but because one irritated bee gives
off a pungent odor or raises a militant buzzing,
and the others smell the odor or hear the buzzing
and are inflamed by it, each through his own
senses and by the working of his own motives.
On a hot day you will see a few bees fanning air
into the hive with their wings, and when these
grow weary others take their places ; but if it were
a swarm instinct that impelled them, you would
see all the bees fanning or all sweltering at the
same moment. As for the honey-making instinct,
on any early-spring day you will find a few bees
working in the nearest greenhouse, while the
others, which are supposed to be governed by the
same collective impulse, are comfortably torpid
in the hive or else eating honey faster than these
enterprising ones can make it.

I judge, therefore, that the communistic bees

[122]

The Swarm Spirit

have some individual notions, and any show of
individuality is so at variance with the common-
impulse theory that it seems to illustrate Spen-
cer's definition of tragedy, which is, "a theory
slain by a fact." In short, bees have our common
social instinct highly developed, or overdeveloped,
and possibly they have also, like all the higher
orders, a stronger or weaker instinct of imitation ;
but these are very different matters, more natural
and more consistent with the facts than is the
alleged swarm instinct.

A scientific friend, the most observant ornithol-
ogist I have ever met, has just offered an interest-
ing 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

[123]

How Animals Talk

bird from my decoys, because a warning impulse
fell upon them at a moment when they were in
danger, but knew it not; and they obeyed it, as
they obey all their impulses, without conscious
thought or knowledge of what they are doing or
why they are doing it.

Here is some suggestion of a very modern
psychology which is inclined to regard the mind
as a thought-receiving rather than as a thought-
producing instrument, and with that I have some
sympathy; but here is also a rejuvenation of the
incorporeal swarm instinct and other fantastic or
romantic notions of animals which preclude ob-
servation. If the anima of a bird or beast is so
constituted that it can receive impulses from a
mysterious and unknown source, what is to pre-
vent it from receiving such silent impulses from
another anima like itself? And why seek an un-
seen agent for the warning to my caribou or my
plover when one of the creatures saw the danger and
was enough moved by it to sound a mental tocsin ?

The trouble with my friend's explanation, and
with all others I have thus far heard or read, is
twofold. First, like the swarm-impulse theory,
it really explains nothing, but avoids one mystery
or difficulty by taking refuge in another. There
was a Hindu philosopher who used to teach, after
the manner of his school, that the earth stood

J«4l

The Swarm Spirit

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 im-
pulse come from, and who sent it?" For emo-
tional impulses do not drop like rain from the
clouds, or fall like apples from unseen trees ; they
must have their source in a living, intelligent being
of some kind, who must feel the impulse before
sending it to others. No other explanation is
humanly comprehensible.

This leads to the second objection to the theory
of external impulse, and to every other notion
of a collective or incorporeal swarm instinct —
namely, that it contradicts all the previous ex-
perience of the wild creature, or at least all educa-
tive experience, which lies plain and clear to our
observation. To each bird and animal are given
individual senses, individual wit and a personal
anima; and each begins his mortal experience not
in a great flock or herd, but always in solitary
fashion, under the care and guidance of a mother
animal that has a saving knowledge of a world
in which the little one is a stranger. Thus, I
watch the innocent fawn when it begins to follow

[125]

How Animals Talk

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 communica-
tion more readily than they learn the meaning of
audible cries expressive of food or danger.

Such is the wild creature's earliest experience,
his training to accommodate himself to the world,
and to ways that wiser creatures of his own kind
have found good in the world. When his first
winter draws near he is led by his mother to join
the herd or pack or migrating flock; and he is
then ready not for some mysterious new herd or
flock instinct, but for the same old signals that
have served well to guide or warn him ever since

[126]

The Swarm Spirit

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 com-
munications. There was nothing unnatural or
mysterious or even new in the experience. So far
as I can see or judge, there is no place or need for a
collective herd or flock impulse, and the birds
and beasts have no training or experience by which
to interpret such an impulse if it fell upon them
out of heaven.

Our human experience, moreover, especially that
which befalls on the borderland of the subconscious
world where the wild creatures mostly live, may
give point and meaning to our natural philosophy.
There are emotions, desires, impulses which may
be conveyed by shouting; and there are others
which may well be told without shouting, or even
without words. A cheerful man radiates cheerful-
ness; 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

[127]

How Animals Talk

force in itself, a force to be reckoned with, apart
from the cry or the look by which it is expressed ;
that all such emotions project themselves outward ;
and that possibly, or very probably, there is some
definite medium to convey them, as an unknown
medium which we call "ether" conveys the waves
of light.

It is true that we habitually receive such emo-
tional 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

[128]

The Swarm Spirit

thing lies behind his silence. And why? Simply
because every living man is silently, unconsciously
projecting his real thought or feeling, and you are
unconsciously understanding it or else making a
vain conscious effort in that direction.

Such experiences are commonly confined to a
room, to the circle of an open fire; but they are
not limited by necessity to any narrow reach, since
there is nothing in a wall to hinder a man's love
or hate from passing through, or in the air to
check its far-going, or in the nature of another
man to prevent its reception. The influence of
one person's unvoiced will or purpose or warning
or summons upon another person at a distance,
should it turn out more common than we now be-
lieve 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 communi-
cation before ever speech was invented.

Whitman, who sometimes got hold of the tail
end of philosophy (and who was wont to believe
he could drag it out, like a trapped woodchuck,
and whirl it around his head with barbaric whoops),
was often seen at the burrow of this thought-
transference doctrine:

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the dark-
ness why are they?

[129]

How Animals Talk

Why are there men and women that while they are near

me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat

and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and

melodious thoughts descend upon me?
What is it that I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as

I walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to woman's and man's good-will?

what gives them to be free to mine?

Again, our familiar human experience may throw
some clearer light than ever comes from the
laboratory of animal psychologists upon the action
of gregarious brutes in their so-called blind panics,
when they are said to be governed by some ex-
traneous 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 "ex-
traneous" 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 irritat-
ing 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

[130]

The Swarm Spirit

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 im-
mediate 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 pan-
icky, more suggestive of a herd impulse (if there be
such a fantastic thing in orderly nature), than
can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild
animals.

In my head at this moment is the vivid impres-
sion 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, shriek-
ing, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously
through choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at
the innocent roof of the railroad station, as at a
symbol of government. The roof was of glass,
and the clattering smash of it seemed to get on the
nerves of men, like the cry of sick-em! to an ex-
cited 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

[131]

How Animals Talk

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 plung-
ing, kicking, squealing through the pandemonium.

There must have been something tremendously
animal in the scene, after all; for when I recall
it now I see, as if Memory had carved her statue
of the event, an upreared horse with a crumpled
rider toppling from the saddle; and I hear not the
shouts or curses of men, but the horrible scream of
a maddened brute.

It was the night, many years ago, when news of
disaster to the Italian army at Adowa broke loose,
after being long suppressed, and I learned then
for the first time what emotional excitement
means when the gates are all down. One had to
hold himself against it, as against a flood or a
mighty wind. To yield, to lose self-control even
for an instant, was to find oneself howling, reach-

[132]

The Swarm Spirit

ing for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy, lifting a
bare fist against charging horse or swinging steel,
like the other lunatics. I caught a man by the
shoulders, held him, and bade him in his own
language tell me what the row was about; but he
only stared at me wildly, his mouth open. I
caught another, and he struck at my face ; a third,
and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one
gave me a half-coherent answer, a man whom I
dragged from under a saber and pushed into a side-
street. His dear Ambrogio had been conscripted
by the government, he howled (I suppose they
had sent his son or brother with a disaffected
Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and
they were all robbers, oppressors, murderers — he
finished by jerking loose from my grasp and
hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again.

Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that
amazing scene and knowing nothing of its motive,
I might easily have concluded that some mysteri-
ous 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 sense-
less emotion which inflamed them had originated
with individuals, who had some ground for their
passion; and that from the individual the excite-
ment spread in pestilential fashion until the whole
10 [133]

How Animals Talk

mob caught it and bent to it, as a field of grass
bends to the storm.

Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of
logic through a long digression), when I go as a
man among caribou or wolves or plover or crows,
and see the whole herd or pack or flock acting
as one, as if swayed by a single will, I see no
reason why I should evoke an incorporeal swarm
impulse, or "call a spirit from the vasty deep" of
the unknown to explain their similarity of action,
since there are natural causes which may account
for the matter perfectly — familiar causes, too,
which still influence men and women as they in-
fluence the remote wood folk.

No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is
rather an attempt to banish the delusion that
there is any such thing as a distinct animal
psychology. Science has many forms, and still
plenty of delusions, but there is a basic principle
to which she holds steadily — namely, that Nature
is of one piece because her laws are constant.
It follows that, if you know anything of a surety
about your own mind, you may confidently apply
the knowledge to any other mind in the universe,
whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath
or the waters under the earth. The only ques-
tion is, How far may the term "mind" be prop-
erly applied to the brute ?

[i34]

The Swarm Spirit

That unanswered question does not immediately
concern us, for in speaking of mind we commonly
mean the conscious or reasoning human article,
and we are dealing here with the subconscious
mind, which seems to work after the same fashion
whether it appears on two legs or four. A dog
does not know why he becomes excited in a com-
motion 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 subcon-
scious field they are akin; otherwise it would be
impossible for a man ever to train or to under-
stand a brute, and our companionable dogs would
be as distant as the seraphim.

When, therefore, the same unreasoning actions
that are attributed to a mysterious collective im-
pulse among birds or animals are found among
men to depend on a succession of individual im-
pulses, it is good psychology as well as good nat-
ural history to dismiss the whole herd instinct
as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social
and imitative instincts, the contagion of excite-
ment, the outward projection of emotional im-

[i35l

How Animals Talk

pulses, 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 "sen-
sible" matters which explain all the phenomena
of flock or herd life more naturally and more
reasonably.

VI

IOOKING back a moment on our trail of
L/ 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 "tel-
epathic" 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 his-
tory 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.

How Animals Talk

And the hypothesis of silent communication cer-
tainly "works/' since it helps greatly to clarify
certain observed phenomena of animal life that
are otherwise darkly mysterious.

When the same dimly defined telepathic power
appears in a man or woman — so rarely that we are
filled with wonder, as in the shadow of a great
mystery or a great discovery — it is not a new but
a very old matter, I think, being merely a survival
or reappearance of a faculty that may have once
been in common use among gregarious creatures.
All men seem to have some hint or suggestion of
telepathy in them, as shown by their ability to
"speak with their eyes" or to influence their
children by a look; and the few who have enough
of it to be conspicuous receive it, undoubtedly,
by some law or freak of heredity, such as enables
one man in a million to wag his ears, or one
in a thousand to follow a subconscious sense of
direction so confidently that, after wandering
about the big woods all day, he turns at nightfall
and heads straight for his camp like a homing
pigeon. The rest of us, meanwhile, by employing
speech exclusively to express thought or emotion,
and by habitually depending on five senses for all
our impressions of the external world, have not
only neglected but even lost all memory of the
gift that once was ours. As an inevitable conse-

[138]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

quence Nature has taken her gift away, as she
atrophies a muscle that is no longer used, or de-
vitalizes the nerve of sight in creatures, such as
the fishes of Mammoth Cave, that have lived long
time in darkness.

In previous chapters we have noted, as rare
examples of telepathy in human society, that a
mother may at times know when an absent son
or husband is in danger, or that an African savage
often knows when a stranger is approaching his
village hid in the jungle; but there is another mani-
festation of the same faculty which is much more
common, and which we have thus far overlooked,
leaving it as an odd and totally unrelated thing
without explanation. I refer to the man, known
in almost every village, who has some special gift
for training or managing animals, who seems to
know instinctively what goes on in a brute's head,
and who can send his own will or impulse into the
lower mind. I would explain that unrelated man,
naturally, by the simple fact or assumption that
he has inherited more than usual of the animals'
gift of silent communication.

I knew one such man, a harmless, half-witted
creature, who loved to roam the woods alone by
day or night, and whom the wild birds and beasts
met with hardly a trace of the fear or suspicion
they manifest in presence of other human beings.

[i39]

How Animals Talk

He was always friendly, peaceable, childlike, and
unconsciously or subconsciously, I think, he could
tame or influence these wild spirits by letting them
feel his own.

So also could an old negro, an ex-slave, with
whom I used to go fox-hunting in my student days.
He could train a dog or a colt in a tenth part of the
time required by ordinary men, and he used no
whip or petting or feeding, or any other device
commonly employed by professional trainers.
At times, indeed, his animals acted as if trained
from the moment he touched or spoke to them.
He had a mongrel lot of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs,
cows and horses ; but they were a veritable happy
family (on a cold night his cats would sleep with
a setting hen, if they could find one, or otherwise
with the foxhounds), and to see them all running
to meet "Uncle" when he came home, or following
at his heels or doing what he told them, was to
wonder what strange animal language he was
master of.

At daybreak one winter morning I entered the
old negro's kitchen very quietly, and had a fire
going and coffee sending forth its aroma before
I heard him creaking down the stairs. I had
traveled "across lots," making no sound in the
new-fallen snow, and, as I approached the house,
had purposely kept its dark bulk between me and

[140]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 Toleon added his bit to the tumult by
stamping, whinnying and finally kicking lustily
on the boards of his stall. Toleon, by the way,
was an old white horse that Uncle used to ride
(he was "gittin' too rheumaticky," he said, to
hunt with me afoot), and this sober beast was fair
crazy to join the chase whenever a fox was afoot.
The negro paid no attention to the noise ; but as
it went on increasing, and Toleon whinnyed more
wildly, and the big-voiced hound kept up a con-
tinuous bellow that might have roused the seven
sleepers, the unseemly racket got on my nerves,
so early in the day.

'What the mischief is the matter with Jum
this morning?" I demanded.

"Matter? Mischief?" echoed Uncle, as if sur-
prised 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' Toleon dey

[141]

How Animals Talk

reckons dey knows it, too. Jum's tole um. Dat's
all de matter an* de mischief."

"But how in the world should he know? You
never go hunting now unless I tempt you, and
none of the dogs saw or heard me come in," I
objected.

Uncle chuckled at that, chuckled a long time,
as if it were a good joke. "Trust ol' Jum ter
know when we-all's gwine fox-huntin'," he said.
"You jes' trust him. I specks he kinder pick de
idee outer de air soon's we thunk it, same's he
pick a fox scent. 'Tain't no use tryin' ter lie
ter Jum, 'cause you can't fool 'im nohow. No,
sir, when dat ol' dawg's eroun', you don' wanter
think erbout nothin' you don' want 'im ter know."

I had often marveled at Uncle, but now sud-
denly I thought I understood him. In his un-
conscious confession that he thought or felt with
his animals, rather than spoke English to them, was
probably the whole secret of his wonderful gift
of training.

The same "secret" is shared by the few men
who have the gift of managing horses, and who can
do more by a word or even a look than another
man by bit and harness. I have heard the gift
described by a professional horse-trainer as the
"power of the human eye"; but that is nonsense
set to melodrama. An eye is a bit of jelly, and

[142]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

means nothing without a will or communicating
impulse behind it. When the spirit of a horse is
once broken (and most of them are broken rather
than trained by our methods) almost anybody can
manage him, the blind as well as the seeing; but
when a horse keeps the spirit of his wild ancestors,
their timidity, their flightiness, their hair-trigger
tendency to shy or to bolt, then I envy the man
who can cross the gulf of ages and put something
of his own steadiness into the nervous brute.

This steadying process seems to be wholly a
matter of spirit, so far as I have observed it, and
whatever passes from man to brute passes directly,
without need of audible speech. For example, a
friend of mine, a very quiet man of few words,
once brought home a magnificent "blooded"
horse which he had bought for a song because
"nobody could handle him." The horse was not
vicious in any way, but seemed to have a crazy
impulse to run himself to death — an impulse so
strong that even now, when he is past twenty
years old, he cannot be turned loose for a moment
in a farm pasture. He had never been driven save
with a powerful curb ; even so, he would drag the
carriage along by the reins, and an hour of such
driving left a strong man's arms half paralyzed
by the strain. Yet at the first trial his new owner
put a soft rubber bit in his mouth, flipped the lines

[I43l

How Animals Talk

loosely across his back, and controlled him by a
word.

Some years later I was riding behind that same
horse, jogging quietly along a country road, when
my friend, with an odd twinkle in his eye, said,
"Take the reins a moment while I get out this
robe." I took them, and what followed seemed
like magic or bedevilment. I had noticed that the
reins were loose, just "feeling" the horse's mouth;
I shifted them to my hand very quietly, without
stirring a hair, and blinders on the bridle prevented
the horse from seeing the transfer. Yet hardly
had I touched them when something from my
hand (or from my soul, for aught I know) flowed
along the leather and filled the brute with fire.
He flung up his head, as if I had driven spurs into
him, and was away like a shot.

Again, I was crossing the public square of
Nantucket one morning when I saw a crowd of
excited men and boys eddying at a safe distance
around a horse — an ugly, biting brute that had
once almost torn the side of my face off when I
passed too close to him, minding my own affairs.
Now he was having one of his regular tantrums,
squealing, kicking, plunging or backing, while his
driver, who had leaped to the ground, alternately
lashed and cursed him. I heard an angry voice
near me utter the single word " Fools !" and saw a

[i44l

Where Silence Is Eloquent

stranger brush some men aside and stand directly
in front of the horse, which grew quiet on the
instant. The stranger went nearer, pulled the
horse's head down and laid his face against it;
and there they stood, man and brute, like carved
statues. It was as if one were whispering a
secret, and the other listening. Then the man
said, "Come along, boy," and walked down the
square, the horse following at his heels like a
trained dog.

Watching the scene, my first thought was that
the horse recognized a former and kinder master;
but the man assured me, when I followed him up,
that he had never spoken to the animal till that
moment, and that he could do the same with any
refractory horse he had ever met. "Try it with
that one," I said promptly, pointing to a nervous
horse that, feeling the excitement of the recent
affair, was jerking and frothing at his hitch-rope.
The man smiled his acceptance of the challenge,
stepped in front of the horse, and looked at him
steadily. What he thought or willed, what feeling
or impulse he sent out, I know not ; but certainly
some silent communication passed, which the
horse recognized by forward-pointing ears and
a low whinny of pleasure. Then the man un-
snapped the rope from the bridle ring, turned
away without a word, and the horse followed

[1451

How Animals Talk

him across the square and back again to the
hitching-post.

When I asked how the thing was done, the man
answered with entire frankness that he did not
know. It "just came natural" to him, he said,
to understand horses, and he had always been able
to make them do almost anything he wanted.
But he had no remarkable power over other ani-
mals, so far as I could learn, and was uncommonly
shy of dogs, even of little dogs, regarding them all
alike as worthless or dangerous brutes.

Some of my readers may recall, in this connec-
tion, the shabby-genteel old man who used to
amuse visitors in the public gardens of Paris by
playing with the sparrows, some twenty-odd years
ago. So long as he went his way quietly the birds
paid no more attention to him than to any other
stroller; but the moment he began to chirp some
wild and joyous excitement spread through the
trees. From all sides the sparrows rushed to him,
alighting on his hat or shoulders, clamoring loudly
for the food which they seemed to know was in his
pockets, but which he would not at first give them.
When he had a crowd of men and women watching
him (for he was vain of his gift, and made a small
living by passing his hat after an entertainment)
he would single out a cock-sparrow from the flock
and cry, "What! you here again, Bismarck, you

[146]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

scoundrel?" Then he would abuse the cock-
sparrow, calling him a barbarian, a Prussian, a
mannerless intruder who had no business among
honorable French sparrows; and finally, pretending
to grow violently angry, he would chase Bismarck
from bench to bench and throw his hat at him.
And Bismarck would respond by dodging the hat,
chirping blithely the while, as if it were a good joke,
and would fly back to peck at the crust of bread
which the old man held between his lips or left
sticking out of his pocket.

One might have understood this as a mere train-
ing 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 per-
formance with another flock in another part of
the gardens. That these wary and suspicious
birds, far more distrustful of man than the spar-
rows of the wilderness, understood his mental at-
titude rather than his word or action; that he
could make them feel his kindliness, his camarad-
erie^ his call to come and play, even while he pre-
tended to chase them, — this was the impression of
at least one visitor who watched him again and
again at his original entertainment.

Some kind of communication must have passed
[i47l

How Animals Talk

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 confi-
dence 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 marv,elously 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 tocKgarrulous
whenever I approached the thing I wanted to
know. He would not tell me how he won the
birds, but made a mystery and hocus-pocus of
the natural gift by which he earned a precarious
living.

The same "mystery" cropped out later, amid
[148]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

very different scenes, in the interior of Newfound-
land. 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-urn dere; see if woodpecker
at home/' I went and knocked softly, but noth-
ing happened. "Knock-um again, knock-um lit-
tle 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 inquisi-
tively.

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 inter-
ested in my knocking, I demanded, "Now, Matty,
tell me how you do it."

But Matty only laughed. When we are alone
in the woods he has a fine sense of humor, though
grim enough at other times. "Oh, woodpecker
11 [ 149 ]

How Animals Talk

know me; he look down at me," he said; and
that was all I could ever get out of him.

So, though I have seen the gift in operation
several times, I have not yet found the man who
had it and who could or would give me any
explanation. There is no doubt in my own mind,
however, that the negro, the Frenchman, and the
Indian, and all others who exercise any unusual
influence over animals, do so by reason of their
subconscious power to "talk" or to convey im-
pulses without words, as gregarious wild creatures
commonly talk among themselves. At least, I can
understand much of what I see among birds and
brutes by assuming that they talk in this fashion.

Such a power seems mysterious, incredible, in a
civilized world of sense and noise; but I fancy
that every man and woman speaks silently to the
brute without being conscious of the fact. "If
you want to see game, leave your gun at home,"
is an accepted saying among hunters; but the
reason for the excellent admonition has not been
forthcoming. When you have hunted six days
in vain, and then on a quiet Sunday stroll come
plump upon noble game that seems to have no
fear, you are apt to think of the curiosities of luck,
but even here also are you under the sway of
psychological law and order. As you go quietly

[150]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 curi-
ously 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, some-
times, indeed, they promptly run away, especially
in a much-hunted region; but more frequently
they meet you with a look of surprise ; they move
alertly here or there to get a better view of you, and
show many fascinating signs of curiosity before they
glide away, looking back as they go.

Such has been the illuminating experience of
[151]

How Animals Talk

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.

[152]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 peace-
ably, trying to make his eyes or his heart say
friendly things, is a very different animal from the
one he stalks with muscles tense and eyes hard
and death in the curl of his trigger finger.

I once met an English hunter, a forest officer in
India, who told me that for the first year of his
stay in the jungle he was "crazy" to kill a tiger.
He dreamed of the creatures by night ; he hunted
them at every opportunity and in every known
fashion by day; he never went abroad on forest
business without a ready rifle; and in all that
time he had just one glimpse of a running tiger.
One day he was led far from his camp by a new
bird, and as he watched it in a little opening, un-
armed 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 mo-
ments, then moved quietly aside, stopped for an-
other look, and leaped for cover.

That put a new idea into the man's head, and
the idea was emphasized by the fact that the un-

[i53]

How Animals Talk

armed 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 with-
out physical or mental excitement, as the natives
go, and presently he, too, began to meet tigers.
In one district he came close to four in as many
months, and every one acted in the same half-
astonished, half-inquisitive way. Then, thinking
he understood his game, he began to carry his
rifle again, and had what he called excellent luck.
The beautiful tiger skins he showed me were a
proof of it.

To me this man was a rare curiosity, being the
only Indian or African hunter I ever met who went
into the jungle alone, man fashion, and who did
not depend on unarmed natives or beaters or
trackers for finding his game. His excellent " luck "
was, as I judge, simply a realization of the fact
that human excitement may carry far in the still
woods, and be quite as disturbing, as the man-scent
or the report of a rifle.

Does all this sound strange or incredible to you,
like a chapter from a dream-book? However it
may sound, it is the crystallized conviction result-
ing from years of intimate observation of wild
beasts in their native woods ; and if you consider

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 him-
self 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 under-
stand or "feel him out" at a considerable distance.
To weigh that probability fairly you must first
get rid of your ancient hunting lore. Hunters are
like the Medes and Persians in that they have
laws which alter not; and I suppose if you met
ancient Nimrod in the flesh, his admonition would
be, " Keep to leeward and stalk carefully, breaking
no twig, for your game will run away if it winds or
hears you." That is the first rule I learned for
big-game hunting, and it is founded on fact. But
there are two other facts I have observed these
many years, which Nimrod will never mention:
the first, that when you are keenly hunting, it
often happens that game breaks away in alarm
before it winds or sees or hears you ; and the second,
that when you are not hunting, but peaceably rov-
ing the woods, going carelessly and paying no
attention to the wind, you often come very close

[i55]

How Animals Talk

to wild game, which stops to watch you curiously
after it has seen you and heard your step or voice
and sampled your quality in the air. These two
facts, implying some kind of mental or emotional
contact between the natural man and the natural
brute, are probably not accidental or unrelated,
and we are here trying to find the natural law or
principle of which they are the occasional and
imperfect expression.

This whole matter of silent communication may
appear less strange if we remember that most wild
creatures are all their lives accustomed to matters
which sense-blinded mortals find mysterious or in-
credible. 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 hiero-
glyphics to an Eskimo. That a sensitive animal

[156]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

should know by feeling (that is, by the reception
of a silent message) whether an approaching
animal is in a dangerous or a harmless mood is
really no more remarkable than that he should
know, as he surely does, when it is time for him to
migrate or to make ready his winter quarters.

This amazing sensitiveness, resulting, I think,
from the reception of a wordless message, was
brought strongly home to me one day as I watched
a flock of black mallards, forty or fifty of them,
resting in the water-grass within a few yards of my
hiding-place. A large hawk had appeared at in-
tervals, 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 ap-
peared in the distance, circling above the meadows.
As a wider swing brought him over the pond a
watchful duck uttered a single low quock! On
the instant heads came from under wings; a few
ducks shot into the open water for a look; others
sprang aloft without looking, and the whole flock
was away in a twinkling. I think the hawk did
not see or suspect them till they rose in the air,

[iS7l

How Animals Talk

for at the sudden commotion he swooped, checked
himself when he saw that he was too late, and
climbed upward where he could view the whole
marsh again.

Now these two hawks were of the same species,
and to my eyes they were acting very much alike.
One was hungry, on the lookout for food ; the other
was circling for his own amusement after having
fed; and though the eyes of birds are untrust-
worthy in matters of such fine distinction, in some
way these ducks instantly knew or felt the dif-
ference between the mood of one enemy and that
of another. Likewise, when I have been watching
deer in winter, I have seen a doe throw up her head,
cry an alarm and bound away; and her action
became comprehensible a few moments later when
a pack of hunting wolves broke out of the cover.
But I have watched deer when a pack of wolves
that were not hunting passed by in plain sight, and
beyond an occasional lift of the head for an alert
glance the timid creatures showed no sign of alarm,
or even of uneasiness, in presence of their terrible
enemies.

I say confidently that one wolf pack was hunting
and the other not hunting because the northern
timber-wolf naturally (that is, in a wild state and
dealing with wild animals) hunts or kills only when
he is hungry. I ran the trails of both packs, and

[158]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

one showed plainly that the wolves were in search
of food ; while the other said that the brutes were
roaming the country idly, lazily; and when I ran
the back trail of this second pack I found where
they had just killed and eaten. The deer were not
afraid of them because they were for the time quite
harmless.

At first I thought that these ducks and deer per-
ceived 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 in-
terest 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 dif-

[i59]

How Animals Talk

ficult 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" explana-
tion, 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 uncon-
cerned in presence of one hawk or wolf, and take
to instant flight on the appearance of another
enemy of the same species.

It should be noted here that these "fierce"
birds and beasts are no more savage in killing
grouse or deer than the grouse is savage in eating
bugs, or the deer in seeking mushrooms at the
proper season; that they simply seek their natural
meat when they are hungry, and that they are not
bloodthirsty or ferocious or wanton killers. Only
men, and dogs trained or spoiled by men, are open
to that charge. The birds and beasts of prey when
not hungry (which is a large part of the time, since
they feed but once a day or sometimes at longer
intervals) live as peaceably as one could wish.
After feeding they instinctively seek to be with
their own kind and very rarely attempt to molest
other creatures. At such times, when they are
resting or playing or roving the woods, the smaller
wood folk pay no more attention to them than to

[160]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

harmless fish-hawks or porcupines.1 Repeatedly
I have watched game-birds or animals when their
enemies were in sight, and have wondered at
their fearlessness. The interesting question is,
How do they know, as they seemingly do, when
the full-fed satisfaction of their enemy changes
to a dangerous mood ? Why, for example, are deer
alarmed at the yelp of a she-wolf calling her cubs
to the trail, and why do they feed confidently in the
dusk-filled woods, as I have seen them do, when the
air shivers and creeps to the clamor of a wolf pack
baying like unleashed hounds in wild jubilation?

I have no answer to the question, and no ex-
planation except the one suggested by human ex-
perience : that the hunting animal, like the hunt-
ing man, probably sends something of his emotional
excitement in a wave ahead of him, and that some
animals are finely sensitive enough to receive this
message and to be vaguely alarmed by it.

The mating of animals, especially the calling of
an unseen mate from a great distance, brings us

*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.

[161]

How Animals Talk

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 observa-
tion. 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 neighbor-
hood ; nor have I seen a single cecropia this season
until the captive called them.

How they find her so promptly is a problem that
I cannot solve. It may be that the call is wholly
physical or sensible, that some fine dust or aroma
is sent forth on the air currents, and the sensitive
nerves of other moths receive and respond to it;

[162]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 au-
diences, after predicting what would happen;
and always they saw it with wonder, as if there
were magic in it.

The moth mystery may be dissolved by some
such purely physical formula; but what physical
sense will explain the fact that when I turned
a modest hen-pheasant loose in the spring, in a
region where my wide-ranging setter and I never
discovered a pheasant, she was immediately joined
by a gloriously colored mate, and soon there was a
hidden nest and then young pheasants to watch?
Most birds and beasts are questing widely in the
mating season, and their senses seem to be more
keen at this time, or more concentrated on a single
object. On grounds of what we thoughtlessly
call chance, therefore, they would be more apt to
find mates when they are keenly looking for them;
but giving them every possible chance in a wide
region where the species is almost extinct, and then
multiplying that chance a hundred times, I still
find it hard to believe that the meeting of two rare
animals is either accidental or the result of or-

[163]

How Animals Talk

dinary sense-perception. Out of several examples
that occur to me, here are two which especially
challenge the attention:

One early spring a she-fox was caught in her den,
some five miles from the village where I then
harbored. She was carefully bagged, carried a few
rods to an old wood road, placed in a wagon and
driven over country highways to the village, where
she was confined in a roomy pen in a man's door-
yard. A few nights later came a snowfall, and
in the morning there were the tracks of a male
fox heading straight to the vixen and making a
path round about her pen. She was his mate,
presumably, and when we found his tracks our
first feeling of admiration at his boldness was soon
replaced by the puzzling question of how he had
found her so quickly and so surely. To answer
that question, if possible, I followed his back
trail.

Now the trail of a fox in the wilderness, where
he is sometimes hunted by wolves or other hungry
prowlers, is a bewildering succession of twistings
and crisscrosses; in a settled region, where his
natural enemies are extinct, his trail is bolder,
more straightforward, easier to read; and in
either case you can quickly tell by the "signs"
whether your fox is male or female, whether hunt-
ing or roaming, or hungry or satisfied. Also you

[164]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 at-
tention 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 be-
yond that I had no interest in it.

The place where the fox seemed to have found
his bearings, or where he stopped his rambling to
head straight for his mate, was some four miles
distant from the captive in a bee-line. The course
he took was entirely different from that taken by
the man who brought the vixen home, thus exclud-
ing the theory that he followed the trail by scent;
and the latter part of his way led through the out-
skirts of a village, where the track of a fox had
not been seen for many years. From the distant
12 I l6S ]

How Animals Talk

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 call-
ing him. For except on the assumption that she
called him, and with a cry that was soundless, I
know not how to explain the fact that he found
her in a place where neither he nor she had ever
been before.

It is possible, you may reason, that this was not
his first visit; that unknown to us, venturing
among his human and canine enemies, he had by
a lucky chance stumbled upon his mate on an
evening when the bare ground did not betray his
secret to our eyes; and that for his next visit he
had cunningly laid out a different trail through
manifold dangers. It was the latter trail, made
without doubt or question of what lay at the end
of it, which I had followed in the telltale snow.

That is a good armchair argument, but a very
doubtful explanation of the fox action, since it calls
for more reasoning power than we commonly find

[166]

rhe course he took was entirely different from that taken by the man
who brought the vixen home.

Where Silence Is Eloquent

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 ac-
customed haunts, and sought till he found her. Re-
member 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 un-
natural and more incredible than that his mate
should silently call him, as his mother had prob-
ably many times called him from the den when he
was a cub, and that he should feel and answer her
summons.

Such reasoning is purely speculative, but there
[167]

How Animals Talk

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 rec-
ord 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 sig-
nificant as how he found her, by way of giving a
new direction or interest to our skin-and-bones
study of natural history.

In this first example the fox was perhaps moved
by the mating impulse, which sharpened his wit
and encouraged his will ; but at times a wild creat-

[168]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

lire 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 loy-
alty, which is the sum of all virtues. Witness the
following:

A friend of mine was hunting one October day
when his shot wing-tipped a quail, apparently the
old female of the flock, which his dog caught and
brought to him almost uninjured. What to do
was the next question. It is easy, because
thoughtless, to cut down a bird in swift flight ; but
when the little thing nestles down in your hand
or tries to hide under your fingers ; when you can
feel its rapid heart-beat, and its eyes are big and
wondrous bright, — well, then some hunters bite the
head, and some wring the neck, and some would
for the moment as lief be shot as to do either.
So to avoid the difficulty my friend put the quail
carefully away in a pocket of his hunting-coat,
and brought her home with some vague idea of
taming her, and some dream of trapping a mate
in the spring and perhaps raising some little bob-
whites of his own. At night he put the captive
into a coop just inside the barn window, which
was open wide enough to admit air but not a
prowling cat; for he was already beginning to
learn that a quail is a most lovable little pet, and

[169]

How Animals Talk

he was bound that she should not again be hurt
or frightened.

Before sunrise next morning he heard low,
eager whistlings in the yard; and there was
another quail, a male bob - white, where never
one was seen before nor since. He was perched
warily on the window-sill of the barn, looking
in at his captive mate, telling her in the softest
of quail tones (for there were enemies all about)
that he had found her and was glad; while from
within the barn came a soft piping and gurgling
which seemed to speak welcome and reassurance.
The opening of a door frightened him ; he buzzed
away to the orchard, and presently from an apple-
tree came the exquisite quoi-lee! quoi-lee! the as-
sembly-call of the bob-white family.

The first quail had been caught miles away from
the man's house; there were no other birds of her
own kind within hearing distance, so far as my
friend and his dog ever discovered, and it was
not the mating -time, when quail are questing
widely. By a process of elimination, therefore,
one reaches the conclusion that the male bird was,
in all probability, the father of the flock over
which the captive presided; that he had helped
to raise the young birds, as quail commonly do;
that he had stood by his family all summer in loyal
bob-white fashion, and that he went out to seek

[170]

Where Silence Is Eloquent

his vanished mate when she failed to answer his
calling.

All that seems clear enough, and in perfect ac-
cord 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 sen-
sitive 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 com-
muning day and night; but they certainly com-
municate 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.

VII

TO know birds and beasts may be a greater
or a lesser triumph than to know ornithology
or zoology. That is a question of taste or tem-
perament, the only certainty being that the two
classes of subjects are altogether different. The
latter deals with external matters, with form, clas-
sification, generalities. Its materials are books,
specimens, museums, one as dead or desiccate as
another; and because it is limited and exact, you
can memorize its outlines in a few days, or become
in a few years an authority in the science.

The former subject, of birds and beasts, deals
with an endless and fascinating mystery. Its ma-
terials are living and joyous individuals, among

[i75l

How Animals Talk

whom are no classes or species, concerning whom
there can be no "authority"; and when, after a
lifetime of study, you have made a small beginning
of knowledge, you find that, like All Gaul of misty
memory, it may be divided into three parts.

One part is observation, which is a simple mat-
ter of the eye. Another is sympathy, which be-
longs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild
creatures, as with civilized folk, one learns to ap-
preciate De Quincey's rule of criticism, "Not to
sympathize is not to understand/' A third part,
more rare and variable, may come from that pen-
etrating but indescribable quality which we call
a gift. A few men have it; the animals instinc-
tively 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 lat-
ter chiefly that I write these wood notes.

One word more by way of preface, to express the
conviction that you can learn nothing worth know-
ing 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 no-
tion that you can add to natural history by collect-

[176]

On Getting Acquainted

ing more skins or skulls, you have unconsciously
placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death
above the beautiful mystery of life. So must you
estrange both the animal and yourself, making it
impossible for you to meet on any common ground
of understanding. And now for our lessons:

If I were to formulate rules for a subject which
can never be learned by the book, I might say that
there are three things you should know, and
another you must do, if you expect to gain any
intimate knowledge of the wood folk, or even to
approach them near enough for fair and leisurely
observation.

The first thing to know is that natural creatures,
though instinctively shy or timid, are not wildly
governed by fears and terrors, as we have been
misinformed from our youth up. The "reign of
terror" is another of those pet scientific delusions,
like the "struggle for existence," for which there is
no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the
word is an exclusively human possession, or afflic-
tion ; 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 aris-
ing from a highly developed imagination which
enables us to picture events before they happen,

[i77l

How Animals Talk

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 dif-
ferent from the fear which makes cowards of men
who have learned to trace causes and to anticipate
consequences.

So much for the mental analysis ; and your eyes
emphasize the same conclusion when you look
frankly upon the natural world. The very attitude
or visible expression of birds or beasts when you
meet them in their native woods, feeding, playing,
resting, seeking their mates, or roving freely with
their little ones (all pleasurable matters, constitut-
ing nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is
enough in itself to refute the absurd notion of a
general reign of terror in nature. If you are wise,
therefore, you will get rid of that prejudice, or at
least hold it in abeyance till the animals themselves
teach you how senseless it is. To go out obsessed
with the notion of fear is to blind your eyes to the
great comedy of the woods.

The second thing to know, and to remember
when you go forth to see, is that sensitive creatures
dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when
they find a pair of eyes intently fixed upon them.
You yourself retain something of this ancient
animal inheritance, it seems, since there is nothing
which more surely excites alarm if you are timid, or

[178]

On Getting Acquainted

challenge if you are well balanced, or anger if you
have a fighting spirit, than to have a stranger
watching your every move while you go about
your lawful affairs. The fact that you cannot
word a reason for your alarm or challenge or anger
makes you all the more certain that you have an
unanswerable reason; which is your inborn right
to be let alone.

This natural and inalienable right (which so-
ciety curbs for its own protection, and reform
societies trample on for their peculiar pleasure)
may help you to understand why the animal be-
comes alarmed when he finds you watching him
closely. He desires above all things else, above his
dinner even, to be let alone; and your eye may as
surely disturb his peace, his self-possession, his sense
of security, as any gun you may shoot at him or
any fire you may kindle in his fragrant domain.

You have but to think a moment in order to
understand why even your look may be too dis-
turbing. 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

[179]

How Animals Talk

himself, he knows well what the look means, that
a rush will swiftly follow; and he anticipates the
rush by taking to his heels. Or the buck, having
once escaped the charge of a hunting beast, will
remember his experience the next time he finds
himself an object of scrutiny, and will flee from
it as from any other discomfort.

Whether this action is the result of instinctive
or deductive knowledge is here of no consequence:
let the psychologists pick a bone over it. Since
we have in our heads a strong aversion to being
observed too closely, we are probably facing an
instinct, which is stronger in the brute than in the
man; but it is the fact, not the explanation thereof,
which is important. The simple fact is, that wild
birds and beasts will not endure watching; and
you begin to sympathize with their notion when
you mark the eyes of a stalking cat, with their
terrible fire just before she springs. There is
always more or less of that fire in a watchful eye ;
you may see it glow or blaze under a man's nar-
rowed lids before he takes quick action ; and it is the
kindling of that dangerous light which a sensitive
creature expects and avoids when he finds you
watching him.

Did you ever follow an old cock-partridge in
the woods with intent to kill him? If so, you
have a living picture of the truth I have explained

[i8ol

On Getting Acquainted

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, fright-
ening them out of their calm, they are apt to
flit into the trees and remain absolutely motion-
less. They are then hard to find, so well do they
blend with their background ; and if they are young
birds, they will hold still after you discover them.
Since they were helpless chicks they have trusted
to quietness to conceal them; it serves them very
well, much better than running away from stronger
enemies; and the habit is strong upon them, as
upon young ducks and other game-birds before
they have learned to trust their wings. But when
you stumble upon an old cock-grouse you meet a
bird that has added experience to instinct, and
that knows when to move as well as when to sit
still. He dodges out of sight as you raise your
rifle ; as you follow him he bursts away on whirring
wings and slants up into a tree in a distant part
of the wood. Marking where he lights, you try
to find him, cat-footing around his perch, peering
into every tree-top, putting a "crik" in the back
of your neck. For a half-hour, it may be, you
search for him in vain; suddenly there he is, and—
b'r-r-r-r! he is gone. The odd thing is that he
sits still so long as you cannot find him; not a

13 [ 181 ]

How Animals Talk

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 ex-
perience; any woodsman who has hunted ruffed
grouse with a rifle will smile as he tells you,
"That's true; but I can't explain it."

A third bit of woods lore, of which we shall
presently make good use, is that natural birds and
animals have, a lively interest in every new or
strange thing they meet. Far from being occu-
pied 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 rov-
ing, and in these idle times they get most of their
fun out of life by indulging their curiosity. I
fancy that in this respect, also, most people are
still natural creatures, seeing that men or women
in a crowd are as easily set to stretching their
necks as any flock of ducks or band of caribou.

So strong is the animal's inquisitive instinct
(for it surely is an instinct, the basis of all educa-
tion, 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

[182]

On Getting Acquainted

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 creat-
ures nearer with forward-set ears and eyes with
questions in them. In a word, so far as I have ob-
served birds and beasts, their first or natural atti-
tude toward every new object, unless it be raising
fearful smells or moving toward them with hostile
intent, is invariably one of curiosity rather than
of fear.

One proof of this universal trait, to me, is that
when I approach wild animals carelessly they
often run away; but of the hundreds that have
approached me when I was quiet in the woods,
every one without exception showed plainly by
his action that he was keen to find out who or
what I might be. Young animals are more in-
quisitive 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

[183]

How Animals Talk

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 blue-
berries to approach rather too near for my comfort.
At close quarters an old she-bear is a little uncer-
tain. Commonly she runs away in sudden panic;
but should you get between her and her cub, and
the piggish little fellow squeal out as if frightened
or hurt, she may fly into a fury and become
dangerous to a man unarmed.

The obvious thing to do, in view of what has been
learned, is to hold physically and mentally still
when you meet a wild animal, and so take ad-
vantage 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

[184]

On Getting Acquainted

every appearance of haste or nervousness. If he
vanishes after one keen look, be sure he is a
veteran that has seen men before, and bide still
where you are. The chances are ten to one that
no sooner does he think himself hidden than he
will turn to have another look .at you. It is
always in your favor, since you have the better
eyes, that an animal has the habit of concealment,
and so long as you pretend not to see him he is
very apt to think himself unseen.

Such a method applies particularly well to all
members of the deer family, with their insatiable
curiosity; but it serves almost as well with beasts
of prey, which may be so surprised by meeting a
motionless man that they will often " point " him
in a way to suggest a setter pointing a woodcock.
We think of the fox, for example, as the most
cunning of animals; like the dolls' dressmaker in
Our Mutual Friend, he seems to be saying, "Oh,
I know your tricks and your manners"; yet on
a good tracking-snow I have trailed many foxes
to their day-beds, and have found that with few
exceptions they act in the same half-puzzled, half-
inquisitive way. And this is the fashion of it :

Looking far ahead on the dainty trail you sud-
denly 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

[185]

How Animals Talk

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 near-
est cover, not turning his head in your direc-
tion, but watching you keenly out of the corners
of his yellow eyes. When he thinks himself hid-
den 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 ex-
cited or puzzled over something.

[186]

On Getting Acquainted

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 Gib-
bon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Very often, if you hold perfectly still, a wild
animal will pass down the runway close at hand
without even seeing you, and you must draw his
attention by a chirp or a slight motion. Then,
when he whirls upon you in astonishment, his eyes
saying that he was never so surprised in his life,
observe him casually as it were, veiling your in-
terest and never staring at him as if he were a
wild or strange beast, but greeting him rather as
one you have long known.

At such a moment quietness is the best medicine
— quietness and friendly eyes. If the animal
wavers, a low song or a whistled tune may or may
not be helpful; it depends entirely on the tune.
You are to keep physically quiet, because any
sudden motion will alarm the sensitive creature,

[187]

How Animals Talk

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 an-
other with me, especially one who grows excited
in the presence of big game, the same animals
appear suspicious, uneasy, and end by bolting
away as if we had frightened them.

One day there came to my camp a friend who
was eager to see a deer at close range, but who
was doubtful of my assurance that animals could
neither see nor smell him if he knew how to hold
still. When I promised him a deer at ten feet he
jumped for his camera, saying that in such an
incredible event he would get what he had always
wanted, a picture of the graceful creature against
a background of his native woods, in soft light and
shadow instead of the glaring black-and-white of
a flashlight. At that disturbing proposition all
his doubts moved into me, who have always found
camera folk a fidgety folk. What with their fussing
and focusing and everlasting uneasiness over dis-
tance or time or shutter, or something else which
is never right and ready, they are sure to bedevil

Fi881

On Getting Acquainted

any wild creature before he comes within speak-
ing distance; so I took my friend and his camera
along without faith, hoping for the best.

Our stand was a hardwood ridge where deer often
passed on their way to the lake, and we had been
sitting there hardly an hour when I saw a young
spikebuck coming down the runway. The next
moment there was a gasping "Oh, there's a deer!"
from the man who had been warned to keep
mentally still. Then began the inevitable tinker-
ing with the camera, which had been thrice pre-
pared and was still as unready as all its kind.
More than once I had sat in that precise spot
while deer passed at a distance of three or four
yards without noticing me ; but now the little buck
caught an uneasy motion and halted with head
high and eyes flashing. If ever there was a chance
for a wonderful picture, he offered it; but he did
not like the focusing, or whatever it was, and
after endless delay the camera clicked on a white
flag bobbing among the shadows, where it looked
in the negative like a smear of sunlight.

The camera reminds me of another way of ap-
proaching deer, a way often followed by summer
campers; namely, by chasing the swimming ani-
mal in a canoe. I have but one word to say of such
a method, and that is, Don't! When a deer is

[189]

How Animals Talk

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 some-
times do, encouraged by their guides; but I sug-
gest that it would be much better to shoot the
creature and have done with it.

A deer's powers are very delicately balanced;
he is nervous, high strung, easily upset. Even on
land, where he can distance you in a moment, he
begins to worry if he finds you holding steadily to
his trail; and I have known a young deer to be-
come so flustered after he had been jumped and
followed a few times that he began to act in most
erratic fashion, and was very easily approached.
When you chase him in the water, and he finds that
he cannot get away from you, he may give up and
drown, as a rabbit submits without a struggle
when a weasel rises in front of him; but a vigorous
deer is more apt to become highly excited, to
struggle wildly, to waste ten times as much energy
as would keep him afloat, to jump his heart action
at a dangerous rate; and then a very little more
will finish him as surely as a bullet in the brain.

Twice have I seen deer thus killed by thought-
less 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,

[190]

On Getting Acquainted

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. Sud-
denly he rose in the water, pawing the air, and
heaved over on his side. When the canoe reached
him he was dead ; and the surprising thing is that
dissection revealed no ruptured blood-vessel nor
any other visible cause of his death. It was
probably a matter of heart paralysis. Such an
ending was unusual, I know; but undoubtedly
many of these overwrought animals reach shore
exhausted, spent to the limit, and lie down in the
first good cover, never to rise again.

Moose and caribou are stronger swimmers than
deer, and of tougher fiber; but it is still dangerous,
I think, to chase them in the water. Once I saw
a canoe following close behind a cow and a calf
moose, the canoeists yelling wildly to hurry up
the pace. Had they thought to look once into
the eyes of the struggling brutes, they might have
learned something which they ought to know. As
the calf lagged farther and farther behind, the
mother turned to come between him and the canoe,
and remained there trying to urge and push the
little fellow along. So they reached shallow water
at last, found their footing, and plunged into the
cover. The canoe turned away, and no doubt the

[191]

How Animals Talk

incident was soon forgotten. I fitever saw the
canoemen again, but I saw one of the moose. A
few days later, in passing through the woods on
that side of the lake, I found the calf stretched out
dead where he had fallen, not fifty yards from the
water's edge.

Perhaps another "don't" should here be mem-
orized 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 ;

[192]

ro innocent and so appealing that it is hard to keep your hands from
him.

On Getting Acquainted

but as you value his life don't pet him or leave
the scent of you on his delicate skin. A wild
mother knows her own by the sense of smell chiefly ;
if she finds the startling man-scent where she
expected a familiar odor, she becomes instantly
alarmed, and then the little one is a stranger to
her or a source of violent anger.

Once, before I learned better than to handle any
helpless cub, I saw a doe drive her own fawn
roughly away from her, out of my sight and hear-
ing. 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, ap-
peared heading in their direction they thought-
fully 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

[193 1 "

How Animals Talk

once she raised the harsh alarm-cry that a doe
utters when she smells danger. Then, as the little
fellow trotted up to her on his wabbly legs, she
leaped upon him in fury and trampled him to
death.

VIII

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

[i9Sl

How Animals Talk

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 noise-
lessly through the branches overhead, or a beastie
creeping through the cover at my side ; and in his
bright eyes, his shy approach, his withdrawal to
appear in another spot, I read plainly enough that
he was asking who I was or what I was doing
there. And by a whistled tune or a drumming on
my cup, or by flashing a sunbeam into his eyes
from a pocket glass, I always tried to hold him as
long as I could.

This curious sense or feeling of being watched,
by the way, is very real in some men, who do not
regard it as a matter of chance or imagination. I
have known of two elaborate courses of "labora-
tory" experiments which aimed to determine how
far such a feeling is trustworthy, and both re-
sulted in a neutral or fifty-fifty conclusion; but
I wonder, if the experiments had been tried on

' [196]

On Keeping Still

Indians or natural men under natural conditions,
whether the result might not have been quite
different. The fact that the first fifty men you
meet get lost or turned around in a ^trackless
forest is significant for the fifty, and for the vast
majority of others; but it means nothing to the
one bushman who can go where he will without
thought or possibility of being lost, because of his
sure sense of direction.

So, possibly, with this feeling of being watched :
it may be too intangible for experiment, or even
for definition. Many times since childhood when
I have been alone in the big woods, fishing or hold-
ing 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

14 [ 197 ]

How Animals Talk

seems that some extra sense is at work, more sub-
tle than smell or hearing; and, whether rightly or
wrongly, it is apparently associated with the pene-
trating stare of an animal's eyes on your back.

To quote but a single incident, out of several that
come to my memory: I was once sitting on the
shore of a lake at twilight, wholly intent on follow-
ing 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 bel-
lowing 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

[198]

On Keeping Still

push would send it and me into deep water. I
mention these details simply to show where my
thoughts were.

As I watched the play in the hushed twilight,
suddenly came the feeling that something was
watching me. The bull had started around the
bay in my direction; possibly his eyes had picked
me out — but no, he was in plain sight, and the
feeling is always associated with something unseen.
Without changing position I looked carefully all
about, searching the lake and especially the woods,
which were already in deep shadow. Finding no
bird or beast, no motion, nothing alarming, I
turned to question the bull, who had halted to
sound his ridiculous trumpet. He was perhaps
fifty or sixty yards away. He had not yet seen
me; I had no fear of him, no anxiety whatever;
yet again came the feeling, this time insistent,
compelling, as if some one had touched me and
said, "Get away!" I did so promptly, jumping to
my feet; and out of a fir thicket behind me charged
another bull that I had not dreamed of calling.

By his size, his antlers, his fierce grunting, I
recognized this brute on the instant. I had met
him before, once on a trail, once on the lake shore,
and had given him all the room he wanted. He
was a grizzled old bull, morose and ugly, that
seemed to have lost his native fear of man — from

[i99l

How Animals Talk

a galling wound, perhaps, or from living an out-
cast 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 wan-
dering away from the small boy getting his first
lessons in the woods, and learning that the im-
portant thing is to hold perfectly still.

Later, when eight or nine years old, I went alone
day after summer day to the wild berry-pastures.
When my big pail would hold no more, I would
make a bowl by bashing in the top of my hat, and
fill it to the brim with luscious blueberries. These
with a generous slice of bread made an excellent
lunch, which I always ate within sight of a bird's
nest, or the den of a fox, or some other abode of
life that I had discovered in the woods. And
again, as I sat quiet in the solitude, the birds and
small animals might be led by curiosity to ap-
proach 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 impatient-
ly, like a little yellow dog with a cat's voice; or
again, a brooding bird that objected to my scrutiny

[200]

On Keeping Still

would first turn her tail to me, and presently come
round again, and finally get mad and flutter about
my head, scolding loudly to chivvy me away.
So it often happened that one had nearer or
happier or more illuminating glimpses of wild life
in that small hour of rest than would be possible
in a month of roaming the woods with gun or
collecting-box.

Once as I was eating my lunch under the p.ines,
meanwhile watching a den I had found to see
what might come out of it, a crow sailed in on
noiseless wings and lit so near me that I hardly
dared wink for fear he would notice the motion.
My first thought was that he was nest-robbing
(a crow is very discreet about that business),
but he appeared rather to be listening, cocking
his head this way or that ; and from a lazy hawing
in the distance I concluded he was satisfying him-
self 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

[201]

How Animals Talk

I could not make out. He turned his treasures
over and over, all the while croaking to himself
in a pleased kind of way; then he put them all
back, covered them again with needles, and slipped
away without a sound. Having kept tame crows,
I knew that they are forever stealing and hiding
whatever bright objects they find about the house;
and here in the pine woods was a thing to indicate
that wild crows, perhaps all of them, have the
same covetous habit.

Another day, a heavenly day when the budding
woods were vocal and life stirred joyously in
every thicket, I took a jews'-harp from my pocket
and began to twang it idly. No, there was noth-
ing 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 hur-
riedly 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

[202]

On Keeping Still

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 man-
ners; and a squirrel who had no manners at all,
scolding everybody and scurrying about in a
fashion which seemed dangerous to his excited
head.

As I watched this little assembly, which seemed
to be asking, " What's up? What's up?" the
meaning of it suddenly dawned on me like a sur-
prising 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

[203]

How Animals Talk

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 curios-
ity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you
know how to stimulate or play upon it and to
hold still while enjoying it.

All that is natural enough, as natural as life;
but it is not written in any book of natural history,
and it came to me that day as a wonderful dis-
covery. 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 power-
fully to your interest or sympathy, as if you saw
a faint shadow of your other self, or caught a
fleeting memory of that vanished time when you
lived in a child's world of wonder and delight.

From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds
and animals in a child's impersonal way; which,
strangely enough, ascribes personality to every
living thing, yes, and honors it. These inquisitive
little rangers of the wood or the berry-pasture,
shy and exquisitely alert, were all individuals like

[204]

On Keeping Still

myself, each one seeking the joy of life in his own
happy way. My only regret was that I was too
clumsy, too obtrusive, too ignorant of the way of
the wild, and so frightened many a timid bird or
beast that I would gladly have known.

All this, too, is perfectly natural ; the instinctive
attitude of a child, as of an animal, is one of
curiosity rather than of fear or destruction. If
left to his natural instincts, a child meets every
living creature with a mixture of shyness or timid-
ity 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 peradvent-
ure, I think, if this were the place; but there is
no need of any man's demonstration. Go your-
self 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 ex-
amine your own mental state, and you will know
the truth of a man's natural or instinctive attitude
toward the mystery of life.

Unfortunately the wild birds and beasts near
our home have learned that man is unnatural, a
creature to be feared, and their curiosity has given

[205]

How Animals Talk

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 dis-
turbed 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, watch-
ing with innocent eyes as you pass them by. In
the intermediate regions, which are harried by
sportsmen for a brief period in the autumn and
then left to a long solitude, the animals are wild
or tame according to season; and it has seemed to
me, not always but on occasions, that in some
subtle way they distinguish between man and
man, taking alarm at the first sniff of a hunter,
but stopping to show their interest in a harmless
woods-rover.

This last is a mere theory, to be sure, and to
some it may appear a fanciful one; but it rests, be
assured, upon repeated experience. Thus, I came
once at evening to a camp of hunters who were in
a sorry plight. They were in a good deer country,
and had counted largely on venison to supply

[206!

On Keeping Still

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 im-
possible to approach near enough for a shot — all
of which made me think that, if you want to see
game, you should leave your gun at home. I had
met about a dozen deer that day; most of them
were within easy range, and a few of them stood
with questioning eyes while a man might have
made ready his camera and taken a picture of
them.

The very next morning, and within a mile of the
hunters' camp, I witnessed a familiar but fasci-
nating display of deer nature. At sunrise I ap-
proached a bog, bordering a stream where a few
good trout might be found, and on the edge of the
opening stood a doe and her well-grown fawn, not
twenty yards away. The fawn, a little buck with
the nubs of his first antlers showing, threw up his
head as I appeared, and in the same instant I
dropped to the ground behind a mossy log. No
whistle or sound of alarm followed the action;
so I scraped a mat of moss from the log, put it on
for a bonnet, and cautiously raised my head.

The old doe was still feeding; the buck stood
[207]

How Animals Talk

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 wait-
ing 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 foot-
ing, for his surprise seemed to have rooted him
in the ground, he began to sway his body to left
or right, stretching his head high or dropping it
low, taking a dozen graceful attitudes in order to
view the queer bit of moss from different angles.
Then he slowly raised a fore foot, put it down very
gently, raised it again, stamped it down hard.
Getting no response to his challenge, he sidled over
to his mother, still keeping his eyes fastened on the
log. At his touch or call she lifted her head,
pointing her nose straight at me, as if he had
somehow told her where to give heed.

It was a wonderful sight, the multicolored bog
spread like a rug at the feet of the glorious October
woods, and standing on the crimson fringe of it
these two beautiful creatures, demanding with
flashing eyes who the intruder might be. For a
full minute, while I held motionless, the doe kept
her eyes steadily on the log; then," Nothing there,
little buck; don't worry," she said in her own
silent way, and went to feeding once more.

"But there is something; I saw it," insisted the
[208]

On Keeping Still

little buck, nudging his mother by swinging his
head against her side. That was the first and only
time, in that quick swing, when he took his eyes
from what attracted them. The doe looked a
second time, saw nothing uncommon, and had
turned to feed along the edge of the opening when
the little buck recalled her in some way. "Can't
you see it, that white thing like a face under the
moss ?" he was saying. "There ! it moved again !"

The mother, whose back was turned to me,
twisted her head around as if to humor him, and
to interest her I swayed the moss bonnet to and
fro like a pendulum. At that she whirled, surprise
written large on her, and I dropped my head,
leaving her staring. When I looked again both
deer were coming nearer, the mother ahead, the
fawn holding back as if to say, "Careful now!
It's big, and it's hiding just behind that log."
So they drew on warily, stopping to stamp a fore
foot, and every time they challenged I gave the
bonnet an answering wag. When they were so
near that I knew they must soon distinguish my
eyes from the moss, I sank out of sight. I was
listening for their alarm-call or for the thud of
their flying feet when a gray muzzle slid over the
log, and I laid my hand fair on the mother's cheek
before she bounded away.

Now there was nothing strange or new in all
[209]

How Animals Talk

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 unsatis-
fied, was plain enough; what puzzles me to know
is, whether she would have acted in the same way
if one of the hungry hunters had been waiting in
my shoes for the chance or moment to kill her.

IX

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, im-
personal way I have tried to describe, two interest-
ing traits appear: the first, that they do not see
you clearly so long as you hold still; the second,
that even their keen noses lose track of you after
you have been quiet for a little time.

The eye is a weak point in all animals I have
chanced to observe, which apparently depend less
on sight than on any other sense — so far as safety
goes, that is. In gratifying their curiosity they
seem to be all eyes. At other times they will
catch an abrupt or unusual motion quickly enough;

[211]

How Animals Talk

but they are strangely blind to any motionless
object however large or small. Repeatedly when
I have been sitting quiet, without concealment
but with "neutral" clothes that harmonize with
the soft woods colors, I have known deer, moose,
caribou, bear, wolf, fox, lynx, otter, alert beasts
of every kind, to approach within a few yards,
giving no heed till a chirp or a slight motion called
their attention. Then they would whirl upon me
in astonishment, telling me by their attitude that
till then they had not noticed or suspected me.
Almost invariably at such times animals of the
deer family would come a step nearer, their heads
high, their eyes asking questions; but beasts of
prey after one keen look would commonly drop
their heads, as if I were of no consequence, and
slyly circle me to get my wind. In either event
success or a better view of the animal depended
on just one condition, which was to hold absolutely
still. So long as I met that condition, none of these
wary beasts seemed to have any clear notion what
they were looking at.

Occasionally, indeed, their lack of discernment
almost passes belief. One winter day, while cross-
ing 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

[212]

At Close Range

rollicking along in his merry way, taking one or
two quick jumps on his abbreviated legs and a
long slide on his ample belly. As the air was dry
and very still I had no fear of his nose, which is
not as sensitive as many others (perhaps because
of the peculiar valve or flap which closes it tight
when an otter swims under water) ; but his eyes
and other senses are extraordinarily good, and it
seemed impossible that he should overlook a man
standing erect on the snowy ice, as conspicuous as
a fly in the milk. So I watched the approach with
lively interest, wondering how Keeonekh would
act in comparison with other members of his
weasel family when he found himself near me,
whether he would dart away like a fisher, or
ignore me like a mink, or show his teeth at me
like a little stoat.

On he came, confidently, as an otter travels,
giving no heed to the enemy in his path, till he
halted with a paw' resting on one of my snow-
shoes and began to wiggle his broad muzzle, as if
he found something in the air which he did not
like. For several moments he hesitated, sniffing
here, listening there, looking sharply about the
lake, into the near-by woods, everywhere except
up into my face, and then went on as he had been
heading, leaving a straight trail behind him. No
man can tell what was in his head, and a very
is [213]

How Animals Talk

intelligent head it is; but his action seemed to
say that he did not see me when he passed literally
under my nose. To him I was merely a stump,
one of a dozen that projected here or there above
the ice near the shore.

Such an incident would be merely freakish if it
happened once; but it happens again and again,
becoming almost common or typical, when a man
stands motionless in the presence of other birds
or beasts. Twice in the big woods has the Canada
lynx, a dull beast in comparison with the otter,
passed me with an unseeing stare in his wild eyes.
And I have crouched in the snow on a treeless
barren while a band of caribou filed past, so near
that I could see the muscles ripple under their
sleek skins and hear the click-click of their hoofs as
they walked. The greater part of the herd did
not even notice me; the rest threw a passing
glance in my direction, one halting as if he had a
moment's doubt, and went on without a sign of
recognition.

The eyes of birds are keener, as a rule ; but it is
still a question with me how much or how little
they see of what is plain as a frog on a log to
human vision. An owl has excellent eyes, which
are at their best in the soft twilight; yet once as
I sat quiet in the dusk a horned-owl swooped and
struck at a motion of my head, not seeing the rest

[214]

At Close Range

of me, one must think, since he is quick to take
alarm when a man appears. Another owl showed
even less discernment in that he overlooked me,
head and all, at a yard's distance and tried to get
his game out from under my feet.

A little dog had followed me that day, keeping
out of sight till we were far from home, when he
showed himself in a waggish way, as if he knew
I would not have the heart to tie him up in that
lonely place, as he deserved. All day long he had
a vociferous and a "bully" time making a nuisance
of himself, stirring up a hornets' nest in every
peaceful spot, chasing deer out of sight with a
blithe rowdydow, swimming out to the raft on
which I was fly-fishing, jumping in to get tangled
in my landing-net when I reached for a big trout —
in twenty ways showing that his business was to
take care of me, though he was no dog of mine.

Late in the afternoon, as I rested beside the
homeward trail, the little dog rambled off by him-
self, 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 hov-
ered a big barred-owl, grim as fate, striking, miss-
ing, mounting, swooping again, brushing me with

[215]

How Animals Talk

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 mo-
ment or two the little dog came out and was
wagging his tail mightily over the adventure when
the owl slanted down on noiseless wings and
struck a double set of claws into him. Then I
interfered, rising to my feet; and then, for the
first time I think, the owl saw me as something
other than a stump and vanished quickly in the
spruce woods.

Hawks likewise have marvelous eyes for all
things that move; but I began to question the
quality of their vision one day when I was watch-
ing a deer, and a red-shouldered hawk lit so near
me that I reached out a hand and caught him.

Another afternoon I came upon a goshawk,
keenest of all the falcons, that had just killed a
grouse in the tote-road I was following. He
darted away as I came round a bend ; but think-
ing 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.

[216]

At Close Range

Luckily I had a rifle, an accurate little twenty-
two, often carried as medicine for "vermin," and
I intended to kill the goshawk at the first chance.
He is the viking among birds, and as such has a
romantic interest ; but wherever he appears he is a
veritable pest, the most destructive of the hungry
hordes that come down from the North to play
havoc with our game.

For a long time the goshawk hovered about,
sweeping on tireless wings high above the trees;
but though I was quiet enough to deceive any
bird or beast, he held warily aloof. Once he dis-
appeared, 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 be-
came 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

[217]

How Animals Talk

go away. Before sunset he headed off toward the
mountain, going early to roost with all his kind.

Dawn found me back on the old road, as much
to test the matter of vision as to put an end to the
game-destroyer. As a precaution I had changed
clothes, and now shifted position, avoiding the log
because the wary bird would surely take a look
at it before coming down. My stand was a
weathered stump beside the road, against which
I sat on a carpet of moss, without concealment of
any kind. At a short distance lay the grouse, a
poor crumpled thing, just as he had wilted under
the hawk's swoop.

Thus a half-hour or more passed comfortably.
A gorgeous cock-partridge sauntered into the open,
saw me when I nodded to him, and went slowly off
with that graceful, balancing motion which a
grouse affects when he is well satisfied with him-
self. 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,

[2181

At Close Range

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, unwill-
ingly it seemed; his great curving talons inter-
fered with his footing when he touched the earth.

This time, instead of a rifle, there was a trim
shotgun across my knees. The hawk was mine
whether he stood quiet or leaped into swift flight,
and feeling sure of him now I watched awhile,
wondering whether he would break up his game
with his claws, as some owls do, or tear it to
pieces with his hooked beak. For a moment he
did neither, but stood splendidly alert over his
kill. Once he turned his head completely around
over either shoulder, sweeping his piercing glance
over me, but seeing nothing unusual. Then he
seized his game in one foot and struck his beak
into the breast, making the feathers fly as he laid
the delicate flesh open. When I found myself
weakening, growing sentimental at the thought
that it was his last meal, his last taste of freedom
and the wild, I remembered the grouse and got
quietly on my feet. Though busy with his feast,
he caught the first shadow of a motion ; I can still
see the gleam in his wild eyes as he sprang aloft.

I thought him beyond all harm as he lay on his
back, one outstretched wing among the feathers

[219]

How Animals Talk

of his victim; but he struck like a flash when I
reached down for him carelessly. "Take that!
and that ! and remember me !" he said, driving his
weapons up with astonishing force, a force that
kills or paralyzes his game at the first grip. Four
of his needle-pointed talons went to the bone, and
the others were well buried in the flesh of my arm.
The old viking had been some time with his
ancestors before I pried him loose.

As for the sense of smell, on which most animals
depend for accurate information, I have tried
numerous experiments with deer, moose, bear and
other creatures to learn how far they can wind a
man, and how their powers compare one with
another. There is no definite answer to the prob-
lem, so baffling are the conditions of observing
these shy beasts; but you are in for some sur-
prises, 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

[220]

At Close Range

wild on a windy day: the constant motion of
leaves or tossing boughs breeds confusion in their
eyes, and the woodsy smells are so broken by cross-
currents that they cannot be traced to their source.
So it has happened more than once on a gusty day
that a deer, catching my scent on the rebound, has
whirled and rushed straight at me, producing the
momentary illusion that he was charging.

With a steady but not strong wind blowing in
their direction, I have seen deer become alarmed
while I was yet a quarter-mile away; this on a
lake, where there was nothing to interfere with
the breeze or the scent. On the burnt lands or
the open barrens I have seen bear and caribou
throw up their heads and break away while I was
even farther removed. In a light breeze the dis-
tance is much shorter, varying from fifty to two
hundred yards, according to the amount of moist-
ure in the air. On days that are still or very dry,
or when the air is filled with smoke from a forest
fire (the latter soon inflames all sensitive nostrils),
the animals are at sea again, and depend less on
their noses than on their eyes or ears.

Another surprising thing is, that the animal's
ability to detect you through his sense of smell
is largely governed by your own activity or bod-
ily condition. Thus, when a man is perspiring
freely or moving quickly, his scent is stronger and

[221]

How Animals Talk

travels much wider than when he is sauntering
about. But if a man sits absolutely quiet, a clean
man especially, no animal can detect him beyond a
few feet, I think, for the reason that a resting man
is like a resting bird or beast in that he gives off
very little body scent, which remains on the
ground close about him instead of floating off on
the air currents. Even when the trees are tossing
in a gale there is little stir on the ground, not in
the woods at least, and the closer you hold to
Mother Earth the less likelihood is there of any
beast smelling you.

All ground-nesting birds depend for their lives
on this curious provision of nature. Were it not
for the fact that practically no scent escapes
while they are brooding their eggs, very few of
them would live to bring forth a family in a wood
nightly traversed by such keen-nosed enemies as
the fox and the weasel. My old setter would
wind a running grouse or quail at an incredible
distance, and would follow him by picking his
scent from the air; but I have taken that same
dog on a leash near the same birds when they
were brooding their eggs, and he could not or
would not detect them unless he were brought
within a few feet, or (a rare occurrence) unless a
creeping ground-breeze blew directly from the
nest into his face.

[222]

At Close Range

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 wood-
cock, 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 mo-
tionless where his mother hid him, the dog must
be almost on top of him before pointing or showing
any sign of game. But if the little fellow runs
or even rises to his feet at our approach (fawns
are apt to do this as they grow older), the dog
seems to catch the scent after the first motion;
he begins to cat-foot, his nose up as in following
an air trail, and steadies to a point while he is
still many yards away from where the fawn was
hiding.

The nose of a wolf is keener than that of any
dog I ever knew; yet I once trailed a pack of
wolves that passed within sixteen measured feet
of where two deer were sleeping in a hole in the
snow. The wolves were hunting, too, for they
killed and partially ate a buck a little farther on;
but the trail said that they had passed close to
these sleeping deer without detecting them.

[223]

How Animals Talk

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 with-
out a sign to indicate that he was aware of me.
Some of these animals came much nearer; so near,
in fact, that I was scary of a closer approach until
I had called their attention to what lay ahead of
them.

So long as you are seen or suspected, you need
have little fear of any wild beast (only the tame
or half-tame are dangerous), but a brute that
stumbles upon you in an unexpected place or mo-
ment 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 up-
set 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

[224]

At Close Range

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 tremen-
dous start of surprise, he has come nearer with his
hackles up as soon as he got over the first effect of
my demonstration. Yet when I am roaming the
woods that same brute will catch my scent at
from two to five hundred yards, and rush away
before I can get even a glimpse of him.

That the same surprising sense-limitation is upon
deer and other game animals may be inferred from
the following experience, which is typical of many
others. I was perched among some cedar roots
on the shore of a pond, one September day, watch-
ing 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 adorn-
ment of the woods and the confusion of all head-
hunters. There was no breeze; but a moistened
finger told of a faint drift of air from the lake to
the woods.

As I watched the buck, there came to my cars a
crunching of gravel from the opposite direction,
and two deer appeared on the point at my left,

[225]

How Animals Talk

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 meas-
ured the djstance afterward, and found that from
their hoof-marks to the cedar root against which
I rested was less than eight feet. Imperceptibly
I turned for another look, and saw both deer at
attention, their heads luckily pointed away from
me. They were regarding the big buck intently,
as if to question him. They showed no alarm as
yet; but they were plainly uneasy, searching the
forest on all sides and at times turning to look
over my head upon the breathless lake. Every
nervous action said that they found something
wrong in the air, some hint or taint or warning
which they could not define. So they moved
alertly into the woods, halting, listening, testing
the -air, using all their senses to locate a danger
which they had passed and left behind them.

From such experiences one might reasonably
conclude that, like the brooding grouse or the
hidden fawn, a motionless man gives off so little
scent that the keenest nose is at fault until it

[226]

At Close Range

comes almost within touching distance. If any
further proof is needed, you may find it when you
sleep in the open, and shy creatures draw near
without any fear of you. By daylight deer, bear
and moose are extremely timid ; they rarely come
within eyeshot of your camp, and they vanish
at the first sniff which tells them that you have
invaded their feeding-grounds,. But when you are
well asleep the same animals will pass boldly
through your camp-yard; or they will awaken
you, as they have many times awakened me, when
you are tenting or sleeping under the stars by
some outlying pond. If you lie quiet, content
to listen, the invading animal will move freely
here or there without concern; but no sooner do
you begin to stir, however quietly, than he catches
the warning scent, and a thudding of earth or a
smashing of brush tells the rest of the story.

I recall one night, cloudy and very still, when I
slept under my canoe on a strip of sand beside a
wilderness lake. The movement of an animal
near at hand awoke me. In the black darkness I
could see nothing; but somehow I knew he was
big, and aside from the crepitation of the sand,
which I plainly heard, I seemed to feel the brute
near me. For a moment there was a pause, a
dead silence; then came a thump, a rattlety-bang;
the canoe shook as something hit the lower end of

[227]

How Animals Talk

it, and the creature moved away. There was
nothing to be done without eyes, so I snuggled the
blanket closer and went to sleep again. In the
morning there were the tracks of a moose, a bull
as I judged from the shape of his feet, to say that
he had come down the shore at a fast walk, halted,
stepped over the stern of the canoe, and went on
without hastening his pace.

That was odd enough ; but more surprising were
some tracks on the other side, between the bow of
the canoe and the woods. Very faint and dainty
tracks they were, as if a soft pad had touched the
sand here and there in an uneven line; but they
told of a fox who had come trotting along under
the bank, and who had passed in the night without
awakening me. That neither he nor the moose
had smelled the sleeping man, or nothing alarming
in him at least, is about as near to certainty as
you will come in interpreting animal action.

There is another and not wholly unreasonable
hypothesis which may help to explain such phe-
nomena; 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

[228]

At Close Range

a kind of poison which is physical and sensible.
Such excitement certainly weakens a man, clogging
his system with the ashes of its hot fires; and
there is no reason why it should not smell to earth
as well as to high heaven.

You have but to open your eyes and expand your
nostrils for some evidence of this matter. Bees
when angered give off a pungent odor, which is so
different from the ordinary smell of the hive that
even your dull nose may detect the change of
temper. The same is true of even cold-blooded
reptiles. When you find a rattler or a black-
snake squirming in the sun, you can smell him
faintly at a few yards' distance. Now stir him up
with a pole, or pin him to the earth by pressing a
forked stick with short prongs over his neck. As
the snake becomes enraged he pours off a rank
odor, very different from the musky smell that
first attracted your notice, and it travels much
wider, and clings to your clothes for an hour after-
ward. 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.

16 [ 229 1

How Animals Talk

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 unfortu-
nately know them. Yet even now, no sooner do
we drop our persecution and assume a rational or
humane attitude than the wild ducks come to the
boat landing of a winter hotel, deer feed at our
haystacks, and bears come in broad daylight to
comfort themselves at our garbage-cans. Such
things could hardly be if the fear of man were
an age-old or instinctive inheritance.

Nearer home, on any farm bordering the wilder-
ness, you may see wild deer feeding quite tamely

[230]

At Close Range

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 ob-
struction like grasshoppers. On all such farms the
deer have the scent of man almost constantly in
their nostrils, and they are simply watchful, run-
ning when you approach too near, but turning
after a short flight to have a look at you. At
times you may see them feeding when the scent of
laborers or fishermen blows fairly over them. But
when October comes, and the law is "off," and
wild-eyed hunters appear with guns in their hands
and death in their thoughts, then the same deer
quickly become as other and wilder creatures,
rushing off in alarm at the first sniff of an enemy.
The fact and the changed action are evident
enough ; the only interesting question is, To what
extent does the smell of man change when he
changes his peaceable ways ?

Two or three times I have had opportunity to
[231]

How Animals Talk

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 Ind-
ian paukee on my back, and I had left her in an
opening beside a portage trail while I went back
to my canoe for a thing I had forgotten. While
I was gone, three deer sauntered into the opening.
They saw the baby, and were instantly as curious
about her as so many gossips, a little spotted fawn
especially. The baby saw them, and began creep-
ing 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, show-
ing a world of curiosity in their bright eyes, but
never a sign of fear.

From a distance I watched the lovely scene,
kindling at the beauty of it, or feeling a bit anxious
when I saw the sharp feet of the old doe a little too
near the sunny head or the outstretched hands.
Then an eddy of wind from the mountain got be-
hind me and whirled over the deer. They caught
the scent and were away with a wild alarm-call,
their white flags flying, and the baby waving by-by
as they vanished in the woods.

Quite naturally, therefore, when a sensitive
[232]

At Close Range

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 roam-
ing 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.

X

TO reach my pond you must leave your canoe
on the shore of Sungeegamook, the home
lake, and go eastward through the big woods.
Yonder is the landing, that bank of green topped
by "everlasting" and blue asters, with a cleft like
an arched doorway in the forest behind it. A
rugged jack-pine leans out over a bit of shingle,
as if to indicate a good place to beach your canoe,
and there is something curiously alive, almost
sentient, in its attitude. The old tree seems to
watch your approach; through its leaves runs a
low murmur of welcome as you step ashore.

Entering the woods (and because you are alone,
and therefore natural, something in their dim

[237]

How Animals Talk

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 re-
turn in the evening twilight.

Everywhere beside the trail are old marks of the
destroyer. Noble maples or cedars that were
centuries growing have been slashed down, dis-
membered, 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

[238]

The Trail

has torn down. Glaring ax-wounds have all dis-
appeared under bandages of living moss; every
fallen log has hidden its loss under a mantle of
lichen, soft and gray, which speaks not of death
but of life renewed.

Where the sun touches these prostrate giants a
blush of delicate color spreads over them. See, it
deepens as you look upon it curiously, and you
examine it to find a multitude of "fairy-cups"
on slender stems, each lifting its scarlet chalice to
the light. Very soft and inviting seats they offer,
yielding to your weight, sending up an odor as of
crushed herbs; but do not accept the invitation.
If you must halt to rest or to enjoy the stillness,
sit not down on one of these mossy logs, but before
it at a little distance, and let its blended colors be
to your eye what the wind in the pine is to your
ear, or the smell of hemlock to your nostrils.
Then will all your senses delight in harmony, their
natural birthright, while you rest by the way.

Where the old road winds about the end of a
ridge, avoiding every steep pitch, young balsams
are crowding thickly into it ; where it turns down-
ward 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

[239]

How Animals Talk

twig ends with a bud in clear space; but the
farther or landward end of a logging-road dwindles
to a deer-path, the path to a rabbit-run, and the
run vanishes in some gloomy cedar swamp or
trackless thicket where is no outlook on any side.

It is in such places, while you puzzle over another
man's road instead of keeping your own trail
straight, that you are most apt to get lost. Com-
ing back you need have no fear of going astray,
since all these trails lead to the main road, and
thence downhill to the lake; but going forward it
is well to steer clear of all branch roads, which
lead nowhere and confuse the sense of direction.

Leaving the road behind, therefore, and heading
still eastward, you cross a ridge where the hard-
woods 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 over-
head is a delicate tracery of leaves, a dance of
light against the blue, and over all is the blessed
silence.

Beyond the ridge the ground slopes downward
to a uniform level. Soon the moss grows deeper
underfoot, with a coolness that speaks of perpetual
moisture. The forest becomes dense, almost be-
wildering; here a "black growth" of spruce or
fir, there a tangle of moosewood, yonder a swale

[240]

The Trail

where impenetrable alder-thickets make it im-
possible to hold a straight course. Because all
this growth is useless to the lumberman, there is
no cutting to be seen; but because I have passed
this way before, instinctively following the same
course like an animal, a faint winding trail begins
to appear, with a bent twig or a blazed tree at
every turn to give direction.

As you move forward more confidently, learning
the woodsman's way of looking far ahead to pick
up the guiding signs before you come to them, the
dim forest suddenly brightens; a wave of light
runs in, saying as it passes overhead that you are
near an opening. As if to confirm the message,
the trail runs into a well-worn deer-path, which
looks as if the animals that used it knew well
where they were going. Clumps of delicate young
larches spring up ahead; between them open
filmy vistas, like windows draped in lace, and
across one vista stretches a ribbon of silver. A
few more steps and — there! my little pond is
smiling at you, reflecting the blue deeps of heaven
or the white of passing clouds from its setting of
pale-green larch-trees and crimson mosses.

And now, if you are responsive, you shall have
a new impression of this old world, the wonderful
impression which a wilderness lake gives at the
moment of discovery, but never again afterward.

[241]

How Animals Talk

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 in-
tent on making a map or catching a trout, or doing
something else that calls for sight to the neglect
of insigh.t. All sciences, including chartography
and angling, can easily be learned by any man;
but understanding is a gift of God, and it comes
only to those who keep their hearts open.

Your own nature is here your best guide, and it
shows you a surprising thing: that your old
habitual impressions of the world have suddenly
become novel and strange, as if this smiling land-
scape 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 delight-
ful 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, yo,ur

[242]

The Trail

love; but they hide from your description in
words or pigments.

Finally, in the lowest of whispers, your nature
tells you that the most impressive and still most
natural thing in this quiet scene is the conscious
life that broods silently over it. As the little pond
seems to awaken, to be alive and sentient, so also
does that noble tree yonder when you view it for
the first time, or that delicate orchid wafting its
fragrance over the lonely bog. Each reflects some-
thing greater than itself, and it is that greater
"something" which appeals to you when you
enter the solitude. Your impressions here are
those of the first man, a man who found many
beautiful things in a garden, and God walking
among them in the cool of the day. Call the
brooding life God or the Infinite or the Unknown
or the Great Spirit or the Great Mystery — what
you will; the simple fact is that you have an
impression of a living Being, who first speaks to
you in terms of personality that you understand.

So much, and more, of eternal understanding you
may have if you but tarry a moment under these
larches with an open mind. Then, when you have
honored your first impression, which will abide
with you always, you may trace out the physical
features of my pon.d at leisure. Just here it is
not very wide; your eye easily overlooks it to rest

[243]

How Animals Talk

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 shad-
owy corridors; and in one of them your eye is
caught by a spot of bright orange. The spot
moves, disappears, flashes out again from the
misty green, and a deer steps forth to complete
the wilderness picture with the grace of life.

Such is my pond, hidden away in the heart of a
caribou bog, which is itself well hidden in dense
forest. Before I found it the wild ducks had made
it a summer home from time immemorial; and
now, since I disturb it no more, it is possessed in
peace by a family of beavers ; yet I still think of
it as mine3 not by grace of any artificial law or
deed, but ty the more ancient right of possession

[244]

The Trail

and enjoyment. A hundred lakes by which I have
tented are greater or more splendid ; but the first
charm of any wilderness scene is its solitude, and
on these greater lakes the impression of solitude
may be broken by the flash of a paddle-blade in
the sun, or the chuck of an ax under the twilight,
or the gleam of a camp-fire through the darkness.
But here on my pond you may know how Adam
felt when he looked abroad: no raft has ever
ruffled its surface; no ax-stroke or moan of smitten,,
tree has ever disturbed its quiet ; no camp-fire has
ever gleamed on its waters. Its solitude is still
that of the first day; and it has no name, save
for the Indian word that came unbidden at the
moment of finding it, like another Sleeping Beauty,
in the woods.

Do you ask how I came to find my pond? Not
by searching, but rather by the odd chance of being
myself lost. I had gone astray one afternoon,
and was pushing through some black growth when
an alarm rose near at hand. A deer whistled
loudly, crying "Heu! heu! heu!" as he jumped
away, and on the heels of his cry came a quacking
of flushed ducks.

Till that moment I thought I knew where I

was; but the quacking brought doubt, and then

bewilderment. If a duck tells you anything in the

woods, he tells you of water, plenty of it ; but the

IT [ 245 ]

How Animals Talk

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 sun-
shine. "A pond, a new one, and what a beauty!"
I thought with elation, as I caught its awakening
look and feasted my eyes on its glory of color.
Then I gave it an Indian name and hurried away;
for I was surely off my course, and the hour was
late for lingering in strange woods. Somewhere
to the west of me was the home lake ; so westward
I headed, making a return-compass of bent twigs,
till I set my feet in a branch of the old logging-
road. And that chance trail is the one I have
ever since followed.

XI

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 earth-
quake, and no two of them tell the same story
or make the same impression. They are like so

[247]

How Animals Talk

many unspoiled Indians, whom we regard from a
distance as being mysteriously alike, but who have
different traditions, ideals, personalities, and even
different languages.

I know not what the spell of any lonely place
may be when you make yourself part of it ; I only
know that it stirs one strangely, like the flute note
of a wood-thrush or a song without words. Though
I never met with an adventure on my little pond,
never cast a fly to learn whether any trout lurked
in its waters, never thought of firing a shot at its
abundant game, yet season after season I returned
to it expectantly, and went away satisfied. Such
a pond has a charm of its own, a spell which our
forebears sought to express in terms of nymphs
or puckwudgies or water-sprites. It grows a better
crop than trout, attracts a finer game than deer or
water-fowl, and you can seldom visit it without
learning something new about your natural self
or the wood folk or the friendly universe.

Thus, it happens on a day when you are waiting
beside your pond, or wending your way to it, that
a moose or a fox or a dainty grouse appears un-
expectedly 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, invol-
untary, instinctive, precisely like the action of a

[248]

Woodsy Impressions

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 know-
ing about a wild animal: books describe, natural-
ists classify and sportsmen kill him ; but to under-
stand him you must be a sharer of his quiet ways.

Comes another day, a day when you are in love
with solitude itself, when you learn with surprise
that a man is never lonely when alone in the woods ;
that ideals may be quite as companionable as
folks; and that around you in a goodly company
are beauty, peace, spacious freedom and har-
monious 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 under-
stood in the town, nor in the woods unless you
enter them alone.

At a later time, and with a thrill of great wonder,
you may discover the meaning of silence, and of
the ancient myth of a lovely goddess of silence;
not the dead silence of a dungeon, which may roar

[249!

How Animals Talk

in a man's ears till it deafens him or drives him
mad, but the exquisite living silence of nature,
a silence which at any moment may break into an
elfin ringing of bells, or into a faintly echoing
sound of melody, as if stars or unseen beings were
singing far away.

This impression of melody is often real, not
illusory, and may be explained by the impact of
air-currents on resonant shells of wood, hundreds
of which fall to humming with the voice of 'cellos
and wind-harps; but there is another experience
of the solitude, more subtle but none the less real,
for which only the psychologist will venture to
give an accounting. Once in a season, perhaps,
comes an hour when, no matter what your plans
or desires may be, your mind seems intent on
some unrelated affair of its own. As you hurry
over the trail, you may be thinking of catching a
trout or stalking a buck or building a camp or
getting to windward of a corporation; meanwhile
your subconscious mind, disdaining your will or
your worry, is busily making pictures of whatever
attractive thing it sees, — radiant little pictures,
sunshiny or wind-swept, which shall be reproduced
for your pleasure long after the important matters
which then occupied you are clean forgotten.

Here is the story of one such picture, a reflection,
no doubt, of the primitive trait or quality called

[250]

Woodsy Impressions

place-memory, which enables certain animals or
savages to recognize any spot on which their eyes
have once rested.

One late afternoon, years after I had found my
pond, I crossed the mountain from distant Ragged
Lake, heading for the home lake by a new route.
There was no trail; but near the foot of the
western slope of the hills I picked up an old lumber
road which seemed to lead in the right direction.
For a time all went well, and confidently; but
when the road dipped into an immense hollow,
and there showed signs of petering out, I followed
it with increasing doubt, not knowing where I
might come out of the woods or be forced to spend
the night. As I circled through a swale, having
left the road to avoid a press of alders that filled
it, an ash-tree lifted its glossy head above a
thicket with a cheery "Well met again, pilgrim!
Whither away now?"

It was a surprising hail in that wild place, sug-
gestive 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 speak-
ing to me. And not only that, but wearing a
familiar look, like a face which smiles its recogni-
tion of you while you try in vain to place it.
Where, when had I seen that tree before? No,

[251]

How Animals Talk

impossible! I had never before entered this part
of the vast forest. Yet I must have seen it some-
where,, or it could not now stir a familiar memory.
Nonsense! just a trick of the imagination. I must
hurry on. Thus my thoughts ran, like a circling
hare; and all the while the ash-tree seemed to be
smiling at my perplexity.

The man who ignores such a hint has much to
learn about woodcraft, which is largely a sub-
conscious 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 com-
plete 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 in-
stantly recognized. Many similar ash-trees grew
on that flat, each with its glossy crown and its
gray shaft flecked by dark-green moss; what

[252]

TTis massive head thrust forward as he tried to penetrate the far

distance with his near-sighted eyes.

Woodsy Impressions

there was in this one to attract me, what outward
grace or inward tree-sprite, I have not yet found
out.

Another subconscious record seems to have been
made for beauty alone, with its consequent pleas-
ure, 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 conse-
quence 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 mat-
ters were brushed aside when a bush quivered and
held still on the farther shore.

All morning the bushes had been quivering,
showing the silvery side of their leaves to every

[253]

How Animals Talk

breeze; but now their motion spoke of life, and
spoke truly, for out from under the smitten bil-
berries came a bear to stand alert in the open.
The fore part of his body was lifted up as he
planted his paws on a tussock; his massive head
was thrust forward as he tried to penetrate the far
distance with his near-sighted eyes. He was not
suspicious, not a bit; his nose held steady as a
pointing dog's, instead of rocking up and down,
as it does when a bear tries to steal a message
from the air. A moment he poised there, a statue
of ebony against the crimson moss; then he
leaped a bogan with surprising agility, and came
at his easy, shuffling gait around a bend of the
shore. Opposite me he sat down to cock his nose
at the sky, twisting his head as he followed the
motion of something above him, which I could not
see, — a hornet, perhaps, or a troublesome fly that
persisted in buzzing about his ears. Twice he
struck quickly with a paw, apparently missing
the lively thing overhead; for he jumped up,
rushed ahead violently and spun around on the
pivot of his toes. Then he settled soberly to his
flat-footed shuffle once more, and disappeared in
a clump of larches, which seemed to open a door
for him as he drew near.

For me that little comedy was never repeated,
though I saw many another on dark days or bright ;

[254]

Woodsy Impressions

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 photo-
graphic record, and always I see my pond, as on
that perfect day, in its setting of misty-green
larches and crimson bog. Again its quiet face
changes, like a human face at pleasant thoughts,
and over it comes to me the odor of sweet-scented
grass. The sunshine brightens it; the clouds
shadow it; brilliant dragon-flies play among its
bending reeds ; the same brood of ducklings glides
in or out from bogan to grassy bogan ; and forever
the bear, big and glossy black, goes shuffling along
the farther shore.

XII

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 wilder-
ness lake lurks a mystery of some kind, which you
cannot hope to penetrate, — a sense of measureless
years, of primal far-off things, of uncouth creatures
dead and gone that haunted its banks before the
infancy of man; but on this little pond, with its
sunny waters and open shore, the mystery was
always pleasant, and at times provoking, as if it
might be the place where an end of the rainbow
rested.

Though small enough to give one a sense of
possession (one can never feel that he owns a big

[256]

Larch-trees and Deer

lake, or anything else which gives an impression of
grandeur or sublimity), my pond had a mischievous
way of hinting, when you were most comfortable,
that it was hiding a secret ; that it might show you,
if it would, a much better scene than that you
looked upon. It was shaped somewhat like an
immense pair of spectacles, having two lobes that
were flashing bright, with a narrow band of darker
water between; and, what with its bending shores
or intervening larches, you could never see the
whole of it from any one place. So, like eyes that
hide their subtlest lights of whim or fancy under
glasses, it often seemed to be holding something
in reserve, something which it would not reveal
unless you searched for it. After watching awhile
from one beautiful or restful spot, you began to
feel or imagine that some comedy was passing
unseen on the other half of the pond ; and though
you resisted the feeling at first, sooner or later
you crept through the screen of larches to know
if it were true.

On every side of the pond save one, where a
bank of evergreen made velvet shadows inter-
mingled with spots of heavenly blue, the shores
were thickly spread with mosses, which began to
color gloriously in midsummer, the colors deep-
ening as the season waned, till the reflecting water
appeared as the glimmering center of a gorgeous

[257]

How Animals Talk

Oriental rug. Along the edges of this rug, as a
ragged fringe, stood groups of larches in irregular
order, — little fairylike larches that bore their
crown of leaves not as other trees bear them,
heavily, but as a floating mist or nebula of sage
green. Like New England ladies of a past age
they seemed, each wearing a precious lace shawl
which gave an air of daintiness to their sterling
worth. When the time came for the leaves to fall,
instead of rustling down to earth with a sound of
winter, mournfully, they would scamper away on
a merry wind, mingling their fragrance with that
of the ripened grass ; and then the twigs appeared
plainly for the first time, with a little knot or twist
in every twig, like toil-worn fingers that the lace
had concealed.

Here or there amid this delicate new growth
towered the ruin of a mighty tamarack, or ship-
knee larch, such as men sought in the old clipper-
ship days when they needed timbers lighter than
oak, and even tougher to resist the pressure of
the gale or the waves' buffeting. Once, before the
shipmen penetrated thus far into the wilderness,
the tamaracks stood here in noble array, their
heads under clouds, beckoning hungry caribou
to feed from the lichens that streamed from their
broad arms above the drifted snow; now most of
them are under the moss, which covered them

[258]

Larch-trees and Deer

tenderly when they fell. The few remaining ones
stand as watch-towers for the hawks and eagles;
their broken branches make strange sepia draw-
ings of dragon-knots and hooked beaks on the blue
sky. A tiny moth killed all these great larches;
the caribou moved northward, leaving the country,
and the deer moved in to take possession.

This and many other stories of the past my little
pond told me, as I watched from its shores or fol-
lowed 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

[259]

How Animals Talk

or new deer-paths offered every one of them safe
footing.

At first these game-trails puzzled me com-
pletely, 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 out-
look which brings deer and caribou out of their
dim woods to sightly places; but there was no
certainty in the matter until the animals them-
selves revealed the secret. One day, when a
young buck passed my hiding-place as if he were
going somewhere, I followed him to the upper
or southern end of the pond. There he joined
four other deer, which were very busy about a
certain spot, half hidden by low bushes, a couple
of hundred yards back from the shore. And there
they stayed, apparently eating or drinking, for a
full half-hour or more.

When the deer were gone away, I went over and
found a huge spring, to which converged a dozen
deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel it
seemed: the radiating paths were the spokes, and
somewhere beyond the horizon was the unseen
rim. From the depths of the spring came a sur-

[260!

Larch-trees and Deer

prising volume of clear, coffee-colored water, bub-
bling 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 abun-
dant, but such as one now rarely finds.

After that happy discovery I shifted my blind
to another larch with low-drooping branches, be-
neath 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
is [ 261 1

How Animals Talk

bite here or there, giving the impression that they
eat now from habit rather than from hunger. As
the moon wanes they change their hours to take
advantage of its shining; and on the "dark of the
moon" they browse only in the early part of the
night, then rest many hours, and have two periods
of feeding or roaming the next day.

Such seems to be the rule in the North, with
plenty of exceptions to keep one guessing, — as in
the November mating-season, when bucks are
afoot at all hours; or during a severe storm, which
keeps deer and all other wild animals close in their
coverts.

Because of this regularity of habit at irregular
hours, the only certainty about the salt-lick was
that the animals would come if one waited long
enough. As I watched expectantly from my
larch bower, the morning shadows might creep
up to me, halt, and lengthen away on the other
side, while not a deer showed himself in the open.
Then there would be a stir in the distant larches,
a flash of bright color; a doe would emerge from
one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps
as she neared the spring. As my eyes followed
her, noting with pleasure her graceful poses, her
unwearied alertness, her frequent turning of the
head to one distant spot in the woods where she
had left her fawn, there would come another

[262!

Larch-trees and Deer

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 lap-
ping the mud eagerly, others sipping, sipping, as
if they could never have enough of the water.
After a time they would slip away as they had
come, singly or in groups; the spring would be
deserted, and one could never tell how many hours
or days might pass before another company began
to gather.

However eager for salt they might be, the deer
came or went in that mysteriously silent way of
theirs, appearing without warning in one trail, or
vanishing down another without a sound to mark
their passing. Now and then, however, especially
if one watched at the exquisite twilight hour, a
very different entrance might be staged on the
lonely bog, — a gay, prancing "here I come: get
out of the way" kind of entrance, which made
one glad he had stayed to witness it. On the
slope of the nearest ridge your eye would catch
an abrupt motion, the upward surge of a bough
or the spring-back of a smitten bush; presently
to your ears would come a rapid thudding of
earth, or a sqush, sqush, sqush of water; the
larches would burst open and a buck leap forth,
flourishing broad antlers or kicking up mad heels
as he went gamboling down the game-trail. If

[263]

How Animals Talk

other deer were at the spring, they would throw
up their heads, set their ears at the dancing buck,
take a last quick sip from the spring, and move
aside as he jumped in to muzzle the mud as if
famished. For it was the mud rather than the
water which first claimed his attention, no doubt
because it held more of the magic salt. He often
gave the impression, as he approached in high
feather, that he had been tasting the stuff in
anticipation and could hardly wait to get his
tongue into it.

The first time I saw that frisky performance I
went over to taste the mud for myself, but found
little to distinguish it from the mud of any other
peat-bog. The water from the spring was whole-
some, 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 drink-
ing, or "just by happentry" I could not tell.

[264]

Larch-trees and Deer

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 expres-
sive feet gave the impression of being as wide awake
as a squirrel. Occasionally as I watched him,
fascinated by the rare sight, his head would drop
almost to the ground, only to be jerked up with
an air of immense surprise ; then the sleepy fellow
would stare in a filmy, unseeing, "who said I was
asleep" kind of way at a little tree that stood
in the opening. The stare would end with a slow
closing of the eyelids, and in a moment he would
be nodding again.

XIII

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 sum-
mers 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,

[266]

Black Mallards

modest like all true nobility, which made the
proud family trees of Mayflower folk or English
kings or Norman barons look like young berry-
bushes in the shade of a towering pine.

Until late midsummer the family had the pond
all to themselves. Never a stranger-duck ap-
peared to share or challenge their heritage; while
day after day the mother watched over the little
brood as they fed or played or learned the wild-
duck signals. Like our dogs, every manner of
beast or bird has its own tribal ways or customs,
some of which do not appear in the young until
they begin to roam abroad or to mingle with their
kind. So, as I watched the brood emerge from
down to pin-feathers, there would come a red-
letter day when two of them, meeting as they
rounded a grassy point, would raise their wings
as if in salutation; and a later day when, the
pin-feathers having grown to fair plumage, their
young cheepings or whistlings would change to a
decided quack.

Thereafter their talk was endlessly entertaining,
if one took the trouble to creep near enough to
appreciate its modulations, expressive of every
emotion between drowsiness and tense alarm; for
it cannot be heard, except as a meaningless sound,
beyond a few yards. The little hen-ducks got
on famously, having the mother's quacking as a

[267]

How Animals Talk

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 mo-
tions with his neck, and finally pump out a funny
wheekle, wheekle, as if he had swallowed a whistle.

Meanwhile the old drake and father of the
family was seldom about ; only two or three times
did I see him enter the pond, stay a brief while,
and then wing away over the tree-tops in the direc-
tion of a larger lake, some three miles to the east-
ward. On that lake there was never a brood of
young ducks, so far as I could learn; but when
trout-fishing there I often surprised the drake, at
times taking precious care of his own skin in
solitude, again clubbing sociably with three or
four other drakes, who had run away each from a
family and the cares thereof on some other lonely
pond.

As the summer waned, a new sound of quack-
ing, 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

[268]

Black Mallards

to traffic about in preparation for the autumn
flight. A little later the flocks fairly reveled in
sociability, gathering here or there with increas-
ing numbers, till on a late-September day I might
find my pond deserted, the owners being on a visit
elsewhere, or I might catch breath at sight of so
many ducks that I could not accurately count them
or distinguish one brood from another.

At such a time my little pond seemed to awaken,
to shed its silence like a garment, to put on its
most animated expression, as at a happy festival
or family reunion. The air was never still from
the gabble of meeting groups (probably all more or
less related), or from the resounding quank, quank,
quank of some old gossip who went about pro-
claiming her opinion to the whole company.
Everywhere the still water was broken into un-
dulating 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 tit-

[269]

How Animals Talk

bits. In an open space a solitary hen-duck bobbed
and teetered ecstatically, dipping the fore part of
her body under, then heaving it up quickly so
as to send the cleansing water in a foamy wave
over her back and wings. Here or there on a
tussock stood a quiet group of the splendid birds,
oiling their glossy feathers, setting a wing-cover
just right, or adding some other last touch to an
elaborate toilet before settling down for a nap.

The glassy water reflected every form, color,
motion of these untroubled ducks as in a glass,
doubling the graceful effect. Around them
stretched the gloriously colored bog; and beyond
the bog were the nebulous-green larches, the somber
black growth and the lifting hills, on which au-
tumn had laid its golden touch. Truly a beauti-
ful 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 ex-
pectancy; but there was greater pleasure, perhaps
greater freedom also, in leaving the happy comedy
undisturbed.

Because of its solitude, its utter wildness, my
pond seemed to be the chosen resting-place of the
flocks on an autumn day (they feed or travel
mostly by night), and perhaps for the same reason
the ducks that frequented it were among the
wildest creatures I have ever tried to stalk. A

[270]

A

't such a time my pond seemed to awaken and shed its silence like
a garment.

Black Mallards

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 nat-
ural 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 some-
times, when I was sure no sound or motion of
mine had broken the perfect quiet, they would
take wing in such incomprehensible fashion as to
leave me wondering what extra sense had warned
them of danger.

Several times in the course of a summer, when
I wanted to observe the little duck family more
nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer play
that I could not understand from a distance, I
would creep out of the larches unseen, worming
my way along a sunken deer-path, and stopping
whenever heads were turned in my direction.
One might think it an easy matter to approach
any game by such methods; yet almost in-
variably, 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 re-
peatedly proved ; nevertheless, after searching the

[271]

How Animals Talk

shores narrowly she would stretch her neck straight
up from the water, as if attentive to some wireless
message in the air.

A wild duck does not take that alert attitude
unless she is suspicious; and a curious thing was,
that though the mother was silent, uttering never
a word, the young would crouch and remain mo-
tionless wherever they happened to be. Sud-
denly, 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 unfa-
miliar shadow on a certain deer-path she would
come at it with a rush, whirling over it in an up-
ward-climbing spiral till she became sure of me,
as of something out of place, when she would
speed away with a warning note over the tree-
tops. If the young were strong of wing, they
would follow her swiftly, giving wide berth to the
deer-path as if she had told them beware of it;
but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air,
they would skulk away, their heads down close
to the water, and hide in one of the grassy bogans
of the pond, where because of the quaking shore
it was impossible to come near them.

Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited
till the ducklings had been some minutes hidden

[272]

Black Mallards

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 after-
noon sun, and a deer moved near the hidden brood
without flushing them or even bringing a head up
where I could see it. Then the mother returned,
calling as she came; and the first thing she did
was to circle warily over the same deer-path,
stretching her neck down for a close inspection.
"Aha! that thing is gone, but where?" she said in
every line and motion of her inquisitive head or
pulsating wings, as she sped away to find the
answer.

Twice she circled the bog, her eyes searching
every cranny and shadow of it. From her high
flight she slanted straight down and pitched fair
in the middle of the pond, where for some moments
she sat motionless, her head up, looking, listening,
— a perfect image of alertness in the midst of wild-
ness. 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, splash-
ing, 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

[273]

How Animals Talk

whish of her wings as she circled the bog and the
splash as she took the water; but not till the
right signal came did I see a motion or a sign of
life from the hidden brood.

The pond was shaped, as we have noticed, like a
pair of spectacles; and a favorite place for the
autumn flock to rest or preen or sleep was at the
bend between the two lobes. Down into that
bend ran a screen of alder-bushes, the only good
cover between woods and water on the entire pond ;
and it was so dense that a cat could hardly have
crept through it without making a disturbance.
That was one reason, I suppose, why the ducks
felt safe at the outer end of the tangle : they could
see everything in front or on either side, and hear
anything that moved behind them.

One day, when the shore at this bend was freshly
starred by ducks' feet and littered with feathers,
showing that a large flock had just left the roost,
I began at the fringe of larches and cut a passage-
way, 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

[274]

Black Mallards

branch reaching down to rustle or quiver as I
crawled beneath it. When the tunnel was well
finished I left the pond to its solitude a few days,
thinking that the birds would surely notice some
telltale sign of my work, some fresh-cut stick or
wilted bough that my eyes had overlooked, and
be wary of the alders for a little time.

And why such pains to get near a bird, you ask,
since one might better observe or shoot him from
a comfortable distance? Oh, just a notion of
mine, an odd notion, which can hardly be appre-
ciated 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 illu-
minating than hours of ordinary observation or
speculation.

Such an impression is not new or strange, or
even modernly psychological. On the contrary,
it is the simplest matter in the world of sense, I
think, and perhaps also the surest. Most animals
have a significant way of touching their noses to
one of their own kind at irieeting; not to smell
him, as we imagine (they can smell him, or even

[275]

How Animals Talk

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 ringers an
object after minutely scanning it with his eyes;
and in this instinctive action is the ancient touch
of recognition. Touch is the oldest and most
universal of the bodily senses, sight, smell, taste
and hearing being later specializations thereof;
by it the living creature first became aware of a
world outside of self; and to it we all return for
verification of our sense impressions. Therefore
it happens most naturally that, despite warning
signs or penalties, thoughtless men will put their
hands into the bear or monkey cage, where animals
are no longer natural or to be trusted, and our
children must be forever lectured, or sometimes
spanked, for handling things which they have
been told to let alone.

Besides, when one is very near a strange bird
or beast, one becomes vaguely conscious of an
extra sense at work, — that real but uncatalogued
sense-of-presence (to coin a name for it) which
makes two persons in a room aware of each other
at every instant, even while both are absorbed in
quiet work or reading. The "feel" of the same
room when one occupies it alone is very different;
and the difference may help to explain why gre-

[276]

Black Mallards

garious animals are uncomfortable, uneasy, un-
less 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 (mysteri-
ous to us, because we do not yet know the organ
through which it works) often warns the solitary
man in the woods or in the darkness that some
living creature is near him, at a moment when his
eyes or ears are powerless to verify his impression.

But that is another and more subtle matter,
familiar enough to a few sensitive persons and
natural woodsmen, but impossible of demonstra-
tion to others; you cannot explain color to a man
born blind. The simple answer is, that for my
own satisfaction I wanted to touch one of the
wary birds of my pond, as I had before touched
eagle and crow, bear and deer, and many another
wild creature in his native woods. Such was the
notion. In other places I had several times tried
to indulge it; but save in one instance, when I
found a winter flock weakened by hunger, I had
never laid my hand fairly on a black mallard
when he had the free use of his wits and wings.

When I returned to my pond, and from a dis-
tance swept my glasses over it, the water was
alive with ducks ; never before had I seen so many

19 [ 277 ]

How Animals Talk

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 explor-
ing 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 ot
the birds, all preening or dozing with an air of
complete security. Here at last was my chance,
my perfect chance, I told myself, as I carefully
marked one brood standing at the tip of the
grassy point where my tunnel ended.

More carefully than ever I stalked a bear, I
circled through the black growth, crept under the
fringe of larches, and entered the alder run unob-
served. Inch by inch I wormed along the secret
passageway, flat to the ground, not once raising my
head, hardly daring to pull a full breath, till, just
as I emerged from the alder shade into the grass,
a gamy scent in my nose and a low gabble in my
ears told me that I was almost near enough, that
the birds were all around me, and that for the rest
of the way I must move as a shadow.

From under my hat-brim I located the gabblers,
a large family of black mallards outside the fringe
of grass on my left. They were abreast of me,
not more than five or six feet away. I had not
marked these birds when I began my stalk; they

[278]

Black Mallards

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. Occa-
sionally through the tangle of grass stems came the
penetrating gleam of their eyes, — marvelously
bright eyes, alert and intelligent.

For several minutes I held motionless, still flat
to the ground, listening to the sleepy talk, admiring
the mottled-brown plumage of a breast or the
bar of brilliant color drawn athwart a sooty wing.
All the while my nose was trying to get in a
warning word, telling me to give heed that the
ducky odor which flowed in waves over the whole
point was different from this strong reek, as of a
disturbed nest, in the near-by grass; but my eyes
were so occupied that I paid no attention to other
senses. As the duck on the tussock at last settled
down to sleep and I worked my toes into the earth
for a noiseless push forward, there was a slight
but startling motion almost at my shoulder. A
neck was raised and twisted sleepily, as if to get

[279]

How Animals Talk

the kink out of it; and the thrill of success ran
over me as I made out another and nearer group
of ducks. They were under the bank and the
bending grass, where I had completely overlooked
them. Every one was within reach; and every
one I could see had his head drawn in or tucked
away under his wing.

Slowly my left hand stole toward them, creeping
forward in the deliberate fashion of a measuring-
worm, first the fingers stretched, then the knuckles
raised, then out with the fingers again. It would
have been very easy to stroke or to catch one of
the birds by a swift motion; but that was not
what I wanted, and would have instantly spoiled
the whole comedy. For the right effect, the hand
must rest upon a duck before he was aware of it,
so quietly that at first he would give his attention
to the hand itself, not to the thing it came from.
Then he would probably give it a questioning peck,
examine it curiously, and finally grow indifferent
to it, as other birds had done when I touched
them from hiding. But here my head was too
close to the ground, and my body too cramped
for easy action. As my hand reached the edge
of the bank, just over an unconscious duck, it
ran into a tuft of saw-grass, which cut my fingers
and rustled dangerously. To clear this obstruc-
tion I drew back slightly, lifted up a grain; and

[280]

Black Mallards

in my other ear, which was turned away, a reso-
nant voice cried Quock! with a challenge that
broke the tension like a pistol-shot.

Involuntarily I turned my head, just when I
should have held most still; and so I lost my
chance. There, at arm's-length on the other side
of the point, a wild-eyed duck was looking over the
bank, her neck stretched like a taut string, her
olive-colored bill pointing straight at me. She
never said another word, and had no need to
repeat her challenge. All over the point and along
the shore necks were stretched up from the grass;
a dozen alert forms rose like sentinels from as many
tussocks, and forty pairs of keen eyes were every
one searching the spot at which the old hen-duck
pointed her accusation.

For a small moment that tableau lasted, with-
out a sound, without a motion; while one was
conscious only of the tense necks, the pointing
bills, the gleaming little eyes, each with its dia-
mond-point of light ; and then the old duck took
wing. She did not even crouch to jump, so far
as I could follow her motion; she simply went
into the air like a rocket, shooting aloft as if
hurled from a spring. As she rose, there was an
answering rush of wings, whoosh! in my very ears,
a surge as of smitten water in the distance; and
in the same fraction of an instant every duck to

[281]

How Animals Talk

the farthest ends of the pond was up and away in
a wild tumult of quacking.

Only one of these birds had seen me, and that
one probably had no notion of what she had
glimpsed in the grass. It was a round thing
with eyes, and it moved a second time — that was
enough for the old hen-duck, and the others did
not stop to ask any questions.

XIV

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

[283]

How Animals Talk

blush of crimson in midsummer, and which became
in autumn like a gorgeous bed of Dutch tulips,
only more wondrously colored. Then I would
look into the doorway under the larches, where
my bear had disappeared. I always picked that
out from a hundred similar doorways to watch or
question it a moment, as if at any time the green
curtain might open to let the bear out. For a
curious thing about all woodsmen is this: if they
see a buck or a bear or even a fox enter a certain
place, they must forever afterward stop to have
another expectant look at it.

From the bear's doorway my thoughts turned
naturally to a little bogan of my pond, which
was different from all the other bogans, because
once a family of minks darted out of it and came
dodging along the shore in my direction. Luckily
I was close to the water at that moment. While
the minks were out of sight under some bushes,
I swung my feet over the bank and sat down in
their path to wait for them.

In advance came the mother, looking rusty in
her sunburnt summer coat, and she was evidently
in a great hurry about something. The little ones,
trailing out behind, were hard put to it to keep
up the pace. She was fairly under me before she
noticed a new scent in the air, which made her
halt to look about for the meaning of it. Her neck

[284]

Memories

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 as-
sociate the motionless figure above her with life or
danger. She passed directly over one of my shoes,
halted with her paws raised against the other, and
scampered on as if she had no use for such trifles.
Before the little ones arrived I half turned to
meet them, spreading my feet so as to leave a
narrow passageway between the heels; and over
this, as a cover, rested my hand, making a shadowy
runway such as minks like. When the kits en-
tered 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

[285]

How Animals Talk

twisting, snakelike procession around the next
bend. These were wild animals, remember; and
ounce for ounce there is no more " savage " beast
in the woods than Cheokhes the mink.

As with birds or beasts, so also with the trees
about my pond: somehow they seemed different
from all other trees, perhaps because of more
intimate association; for though all the cedars
or hemlocks of a forest look alike to a stranger,
no sooner do you spend days alone among them
than you begin to have a curious feeling of in-
dividuality, 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 kin-
ship to humanity.

Foremost among these memorable trees was a
great white-pine, to me the noblest of all forest
growths, which stood on a knoll to westward of
my pond, on the way to camp, and which always
seemed to cry hail or farewell as I came or went.
It had a stem to make one wonder, almost to make
one reverent. Massive, soft-colored, finely reticu-

[286]

Memories

lated it was ; wide as the span of a man's arms,
and rising near a hundred feet without knot or
branch, — a glorious upspringing shaft, immensely
strong, yet delicate in its poise as a lance in rest.
From the top of the shaft rugged arms were
stretched out above the tallest trees, and on these
rested lightly as a cloud its crown of green. Like
others that overtop their fellows, the old pine had
paid the penalty of greatness. Whirlwinds that
left lower trees untouched had stripped it of half
its branches; lightning had leaped upon it from
the clouds, leaving a spiral scar from crown to
foot; but the wound which threatened its death
was meanwhile its life, because the lumbermen,
seeing the lightning's mark, had passed on and
left the pine in its solitary grandeur.

When I first saw that tree I changed the trail so
as to pass beneath it; and thereafter it was like a
living presence, benign and friendly, beside the
way. To lay a hand on its mighty stem, as one
passed eastward in the early morning, was to
receive an impression of renewed power, — a power
which the scornful might attribute to imagination,
the chemist to electrons or radio-activity, and the
simple man to his Mother Nature. At evening,
as one followed the dim trail homeward in the
fading light, one had only to look up for a guiding
sign; and there, solemn and still against the twi-

[287]

How Animals Talk

light 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, morn-
ing 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 maj-
esty, or was so worthy of free men. The remem-
brance of it in any national crisis or call to duty
sets the American heart beating to the rhythm
of Whittier's" Pine-Tree":

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted

shield,
Give to northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's

tattered field.

[288]

Memories

Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round

the board,
Answering England's royal missive with a firm "Thus saith

the Lord,"

Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!
What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do

to-day.

Very different from the majestic pine was a
little larch-tree, under which I often sat while
watching the deer. As I came down the trail,
after a year's absence, it would seem to lift its
head and step forth from all the other larches,
calling out cheerily: "Welcome once more! And
why so long away? See, here is your old place
waiting." And drawing aside the delicate
branches, I would find the seat of dry moss and
springy boughs, the back-rest, the open window
with its drapery of lace, — everything just as I had
left it.

Near this sociable young larch stood its dead
ancestor, grim and silent, which the moths had
killed; and this, too, seemed different from all
other trees living or dead. On sunny days it
threw a straight shaft of shadow over my blind;
and the shadow moved along the ground from
west to east, telling the creeping hours like a sun-
dial. At the tip of the lofty stub a short branch
thrust itself out at a right angle, and this served

[289]

How Animals Talk

as the finger of my strange timepiece. When it
rested on a bed of brimming pitcher-plants it
pointed to the lunch in my pocket ; when it touched
the root of a water-maple it spoke of the home
trail; and between, at irregular intervals, were a
nanny-bush, a tuft of wild cotton and a shy
orchid to mark the less important hours. Once,
when I glanced at the slow-moving shadow, it
was topped by a striking symbolic figure, and
looking up quickly I found an eagle perched on
the outstretched finger of my dial. After that the
old tamarack had a new dignity in my eyes; it
stood on an eagle's line of flight, one of his regular
ways in crossing from mountain to lake, and from
it the kingly-looking bird was wont to survey this
part of his silent domain, the sun gleaming on his
snow-white crest.

A stone's-throw behind my larch blind was a
portly young fir, which I could never pass without
a smile as it nodded to remind me that it was not
like other firs. Thousands of these trees, crowd-
ing the northern forest, seem to be all grown on the
same model, like peas in a pod ; but this one had a
character and a history to set it forever apart from
its kind. And this is the tale which always passed
silently between us when we met:

One day, as I watched some deer at the salt-lick,
they suddenly became uneasy, looking and harking

[290]

Memories

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 under-
stand 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 dark-
ened ; the face of my pond became as I had never
seen it before; thunder growled in the distance;
coppery clouds with light flaming through them
came rolling over the tree-tops; and all nature
said, as plainly as a fire-bell, "Get to cover, and
quickly!"

As I went back into the woods, seeking shelter,
a few big drops hit the leaves like flails; then came
a pause, still as death, and then the deluge.
Ahead in the gloom I spied a young fir (never
pick a tall tree, or a solitary tree, in a tempest
of lightning) which thrust out a mass of feathery
branches from a thicket of its fellows. "This for
mine," I said as I dived under it, accompanied by
a blinding flare of light and an ear-splitting crack
— and almost ran against the heels of a buck that
jumped out on the other side. By an odd chance,
one in ten thousand, he had picked the same fir
for shelter, and was no doubt thinking he had
picked well when I came blundering in with the
thunderbolt and drove him out into the downpour.

[291]

How Animals Talk

"Hold on, old sport! Come back; it's your
tree," I called after him, feeling as if I had stolen
a child's umbrella ; but he paid no attention.

Thinking he would not go far, and knowing he
could hear or smell nothing in that rush of rain
and crashing of thunder, I crept slowly after him.
There he was, hunched up in the lee of a big hem-
lock, ears drooping, legs streaming, and little spurts
of mist popping up from his pelted hide. Though
woebegone enough, he had not forgotten caution;
oh no ! trust an old buck for that in any weather.
His tail was to the tree, his head turned warily
to the trail over which he had come. And there I
left him, wishing as I turned back that he would
let me stand under his hemlock, or else come and
share my fir, just for a little company.

Near the lower end of my pond was still another
tree which I must revisit ; yes, surely, not only for
its happy memories, but also in anticipation of
some merry surprise, of which it seemed to have
endless store. It stood on a bank overlooking a
sunny dell in the woods, a wonderfully pleasant
place where no wind entered, where the air was
always fragrant, and a runlet of cool water sang
a little tune to itself all day long. Its gnarled
trunk was scarcely more than a shell, which
boomed like a drum when a woodpecker sounded
it; and above were hollow limbs with knot-hole

[292]

Memories

entrances, offering hospitality to any wild creature
in search of a weather-proof den or nesting-place.

The first time I passed this old tree a family of
red squirrels were laying claim to it in a tiff with
some larger beast or bird, which slipped away as
I approached. The next time I saw it, a year
later, it was silent and apparently deserted; but
as I rose from drinking at the runlet the head of a
little gray owl appeared at a knot-hole. For full
ten minutes he remained there motionless, without
word or sign or even a blink to say that he was
watching me, though it was undoubtedly some
noise or stir of mine which brought him up to his
window.

After that I fell in the way of turning aside to
loaf awhile under the inn-tree; and rarely could
one loaf there very long without overhearing
something not intended for a stranger's ear, some
low dialogue or hammering signal or petulant
whining or cautious scratching, to remind one
of the running comedy of the woods. It was
evidently an exchange, a crossroad or meeting-
place for the wood folk, calling in every passer-by
as a certain store or corner of a sleepy town in-
vites all idlers, boys and stray dogs, while other
stores or corners are empty, save for women folk,
and quite respectable.

Once in the late morning, as I sat with an ear to

20 [ 293 ]

How Animals Talk

the resonant shell, listening to the talk of unseen
creatures which I fancied were young 'coons, a
big log-cock flashed into the old tree, drew himself
up on a stub over my head, and seemed to cock
his ear at the voices to which I had been listening.
Now the log-cock is naturally a wary bird, shy
and difficult of approach; but this gorgeous fellow
with the scarlet crest became almost sociable in
his curiosity, perhaps because the place was so
quiet, so friendly, with no motion or hint of danger
to disturb its tranquillity. He saw me at once,
as the change in his bright eye plainly said; but,
deceived by my stillness or the sober coloring of my
clothes, he set me down as a tree-fungus or mush-
room 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 noth-
ing 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

[294]

Memories

that rattled near him, as if to demand, "Well, what
in the world sent you flying?" Presently he sent
forth a call, not the loud, high, prolonged note
which you hear from him at a distance, but a soft,
wheedling ah-koo! ah-koo! only twice repeated.
When his call was answered in a different strain,
a questioning strain it seemed to me, he darted
away and returned within the minute accompanied
by another log-cock.

But enough of such pictures! They flash joy-
ously 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

[295] '

How Animals Talk

at the end of the alder run, with sunshiny water
and crimson bog and misty-green larches around
them, as a frame for the picture; and then the
whole beautiful anticipation came tumbling in
ruin about my ears.

Before I reached my pond, before I saw the
welcoming gleam of it even, I was at every step
going over my shoetops in water, where formerly
I had always found dry footing. Something dis-
astrous 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 lumber-
men, whose ugly works are the ruination of every
place they visit, when at last I waded to an open-
ing that gave outlook on my pond; and the first
thing I noticed, as my eyes swept the familiar
scene, was a beaver-house cocked up on the shore,
like a warning sign of new ownership.

It is true that blessings brighten as they take
their flight: not till I read that crude sign of
dispossession did I know how much pleasure my
little pond had given me. The lonely beauty
which could quiet a man like a psalm, or like an
Indian's wordless prayer; the glimpses of wild
creatures at home and unafraid ; the succession of
radiant pictures, at sunny midday, or beneath the
hushed twilight, or in the expectant morning be-

[296]

Memories

fore 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 hope-
less! I might have prevented the ruin had I
known ; but now it was beyond all remedy. With
a different interest, therefore, and still resentful
that my pond was spoiled as thoroughly as any
lumberman would have spoiled it, I made my
way around the flood to examine the beavers' work
at the outlet.

XV

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, wander-
ing away under bending grasses to lose itself in
an alder swamp, where innumerable channels of-
fered 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-

[298]

Beaver Work

water, and then Pine Stream making its tortuous
way through an untraveled region to the Penob-
scot. 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 ex-
ploring family had made its lonely way, guided at
every turn by the flavor of distant springs, till one
after another they crept under the fallen log and
entered my pond, which was solitary enough to
satisfy even their pioneer instincts. They had
first picked a site for their new lodge, on a point
overlooking the lower half of the pond, and had
then gone back to the outlet to raise the water.

Their dam was a rare piece of wild engineering;
so much I had to confess, even while I wished that
the beavers had chosen some other place to dis-
play 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

[299]

How Animals Talk

reversed both rules, for some reason or impulse
which I could not fathom, — except on the im-
probable assumption that the animals could foresee
the end of their work from the beginning. The
finished dam was an amazingly good one, as you
shall see; but whether it resulted from planning
or happy experiment or just following the water,
only a certain old beaver could tell.

Since there was no other outlet to my pond, the
beavers were obliged to build here; but the site
was a poor one, the land being uniformly low on all
sides, and no sooner did they finish their dam than
the rising water flowed around both ends of it.
To remedy this they pushed out a curving wing
from either end of their first arch, so that the line
of their dam was now a pretty triple-curve. Again
and again the outgoing water crept around the
obstacle ; each time the beavers added other curv-
ing 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

[300]

Beaver Work

next task was to build a lodge on the point above ;
then they dug a canal through the bog to the
nearest grove of hardwood, and cut down a liberal
part of the trees for their winter supply of bark.
The branches of these trees had been cut into
convenient lengths, floated through the canal, and
stored in a great food-pile in the deep water near
the lodge.

When I found the dam, several deer (to judge
from the tracks) were already using the top of it
as a runway in passing from the flooded ground
on one side of the pond to the other. From either
end a game-trail led upward along the shore, no
longer following immemorial paths over the bog,
which was submerged with all its splendor of color,
but making a new and rougher way through the
black growth. When I followed one of these trails
it led me completely around the pond, going con-
fidently 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

[301]

How Animals Talk

seeking something and finding it not, they dis-
appeared in the dusky woods.

And so I went away, looking for the last time
sadly on the little pond, as upon a place one has
owned and loved, but which has passed into other
hands. Though the wild ducks still breed or
gather there, it is no longer the same. There is
no restful spot from which to watch the waters
dance with the wind, or frown at the cloud, or
smile at the sunshine; the little larches are all
dead beside their ancestors ; the carpet of colored
moss is but a memory. When the beavers go to
pioneer a remoter spot, I shall break their dam
and let the water return to its ancient level.
Then, if happily I live long enough for another
fringe of larches to grow, and another mossy rug
to crimson under the waning sun, perhaps it will
be my pond once more.

THE END

RETURN BIOSCIENCE & NATURAL RESOURSES LIBRARY
TO — •*• 2101 VALLEY LIFE SCIENCES BLDG. 642-2531

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DDO. 50m. 1 1 /94 BERKELEY, CA 94720

COM

5fc,bi366