An old Indian, whom I know well, told me that he once caught a bear in
his deadfall. That same day the bear's mate came and tried to lift
away the heavily weighted log that had fallen on her back and crushed
her. Failing in this he broke his way into the inclosure; and when the
Indian came, drawn in on silent, inquisitive feet by a curious low
sound in the air, the bear was sitting beside his dead mate, holding
her head in his arms, rocking it to and fro, moaning.--
Two things must be done by the modern nature writer who would first
understand the animal world and then share his discovery with others.
He must collect his facts, at first hand if possible, and then he must
interpret the facts as they appeal to his own head and heart in the
light of all the circumstances that surround them. The child will be
content with his animal story, but the man will surely ask the why and
the how of every fact of animal life that particularly appeals to him.
For every fact is also a revelation, and is chiefly interesting, not
for itself, but for the law or the life which lies behind it and which
it in some way expresses. An apple falling to the ground was a common
enough fact,--so common that it had no interest until some one thought
about it and found the great law that grips alike the falling apple
and the falling star.
It is so in the animal world. The common facts of color, size, and
habit were seen for centuries, but had little meaning or interest
until some one thought about them and gave us the law of species. For
most birds and animals these common facts and their meaning are now
well known, and it is a wearisome and thankless task to go over them
again. The origin of species and the law of gravitation are now put in
the same comfortable category with the steam engine and the telegraph
wire and other things that we think we understand. Meanwhile the air
has unseen currents that are ready to bear our messages, and the sun
wastes enough energy on our unresponsive planet daily to make all our
fires unnecessary, if we but understood. Meanwhile, in the animal
world, an immense array of new facts are hidden away, or are slowly
coming to light as nature students follow the wild things in their
native haunts and find how widely they differ one from another of the
same kind, and how far they transcend the printed lists of habits that
are supposed to belong to them.
We were too long content with the ugly telegraph pole and wire as the
limit of perfection in communication; and we have been too well
satisfied with the assumption that animals are governed by some queer,
unknown thing called instinct, and that all are alike that belong to
the same class. That is true only outwardly. It is enough to give the
animal a specific name, but no more; and an animal's name or species
is not the chief thing about him. You are not through with Indians
when you have determined their race. That is sufficient for
ethnology; to write in a book: possibly also the Calvinistic
theologian was one time satisfied therewith; but the Indian's life
still remains, more important than his race, and only after two
centuries of neglect, or persecution, or injustice, are we awaking to
the fact that his life is one of extraordinary human interest. His
medicine lore and his thoughts of God lie deeper than the curve of his
cranium; his legends and his rude music must be interpreted, as well
as the color of his skin, and we are but just beginning to see the
meaning of these larger things.
All this is only an analogy and proves nothing. However, it may
suggest, if one thinks about it, that possibly we have made a slightly
similar mistake about the animals; that we are not quite through with
them when we have cried instinct and named their species, nor
altogether justified in killing them industriously off the face of the
earth--as we once did with the poor Beothuk Indians for the skins that
they wore. Beneath their fur and feathers is their life; and a few
observers are learning that their life also, with its faint suggestion
of our own primeval childhood, is one of intense human interest. Some
of them plan and calculate; and mathematics, however elementary, is
hardly a matter of instinct. Some of them build dams and canals; some
have definite social regulations; some rescue comrades; some bind
their own wounds, and even set a broken leg, as will be seen in one of
the following chapters. All higher orders communicate more or less
with each other, and train their young, and modify their habits to
meet changing conditions. These things, and many more quite as
wonderful, are also facts. We are still waiting for the naturalist who
will tell us truly what they mean.
I have had these two things--the new facts and the interpretation
thereof--in mind in putting together the following sketches from my
note-books and wilderness records. The facts have been carefully
selected from many years' observations, with a view of emphasizing
some of the unusual or unknown things of the animal world. Indeed, in
all my work, or rather play, out of doors I have tried to
discover the unusual things,--the things that mark an animal's
individuality,--leaving the work of general habits and specific
classification to other naturalists who know more and can do it
better. Therefore have I passed over a hundred animals or birds to
watch one, and have recorded only the rare observations, such as are
seldom seen, and then only by men who spend long days and seasons in
the woods in silent watchfulness.
Whether these rare habits are common property among the species, and
seem strange to us only because we know so very little of the hidden
life of wild animals, or whether they are the discovery of a few rare
individuals better endowed by nature than their fellows, I must leave
to the reader to determine; for I do not know. This determination,
however, must come, not by theory or prejudice or _a priori_
reasoning, but simply by watching the animals more closely when they
are unconscious of man's presence and so express themselves naturally.
As a possible index in the matter I might suggest that I have rarely
made an observation, however incredible it seemed to me at the time,
without sooner or later finding some Indian or trapper or naturalist
who had seen a similar thing among the wild creatures. The woodcock
genius, whose story is recorded here, is a case in point. So is the
porcupine that rolled down a long hill for the fun of the thing
apparently--an observation that has been twice confirmed, once by a
New Brunswick poacher and again by a Harvard instructor. So also are
the wildcat that stole my net, and the heron that chummed little fish
by a bait, and the fox that played possum when caught in a coop, and
the kingfishers that stocked a pool with minnows for their little ones
to catch, and the toad that learned to sit on a cow's hoof and wait
for the flies at milking time. All these and a score more of
incredible things, seen by different observers in different places,
would seem to indicate that intelligence is more widely spread among
the Wood Folk than we had supposed; and that, when we have opened our
eyes wider and cast aside our prejudices, we shall learn that Nature
is generous, even to the little folk, with her gifts and graces.
As for the interpretation of the facts, upon which I have occasionally
ventured,--that is wholly my own and is of small consequence beside
the other. Its value is a purely personal one, and I record it rather
to set the reader thinking for himself than to answer his questions.
In the heart of every man will be found the measure of his world,
whether it be small or great. He will judge heat, not by mathematical
computation of the sun's energy, but by the twitch of his burned
finger, as every other child does; and comprehend the law of reaction,
not from Ganot's treatise, but by pulling on his own boot-straps. So,
with all the new facts of animal life before him, he will still live
in a blind world and understand nothing until he have the courage to
look in his own heart and read.