WILD NEIGHBORS COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY THE M ACM ILL AN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped August, 1897. Reprinted October, 1899; August, 1902. Norfcooto J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. &0 fifet WHO HAS BEEN MY MOST ENCOURAGING CRITIC AND MY BEST FRIEND 131458 ACKNOWLEDGMENT THE substance of several of the essays, or of parts of them, that follow, has been printed heretofore in The Field (of London), Harpers Magazine, The Popular Science Monthly, The Evening Post (of New York), or Frank Leslie *s Popular Monthly. The author desires to credit these publi- cations with this priority, and to thank them for permitting him to make this new and revised use of the material. CONTENTS CHAPTER I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS .... American Gray afid Red Squirrels. CHAPTER II THE FATHER OF GAME ....... 33 The Puma, Cougar, or American Panther. CHAPTER III THE SERVICE OF TAILS ....... 6l Their Use and Importance to various Creatures. CHAPTER IV THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS ...... 99 The Coyote, or American Prairie Wolf. CHAPTER V THE BADGER AND HIS KIN ....... IJ 9 The American Badger and other Burrowers. CONTENTS CHAPTER VI CHAPTER X THE BEA: Raccoons and 'Coon-hunting. PAGE ANIMAL TRAINING AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE . . .157 Observations upon Animals in Menageries. CHAPTER VII A WOODLAND CODGER . . .- . . .186 The Canada and other American Porcupines. CHAPTER VIII THE SKUNK, CALMLY CONSIDERED ..... 209 With Special Reference to his Means of Defence. CHAPTER IX A NATURAL NEW ENGLANDER ...... 25I The Woodchuck, Groundhog, or Maryland Marmot. A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE BEAR 272 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE A GRAY SQUIRREL Frontispiece Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. SKULL OF A GRAY SQUIRREL 21 HEAD OF A RED SQUIRREL 30 A PUMA KEMEYS'S STATUE 32 From a retouched Photograph by Eldred S. Bates. ZUNI FETICHES OF THE PUMA 58 AN OPOSSUM AND HER YOUNG 60 THE GREAT ANT-EATER 65 A HORSE-SHOE CRAB, USING ITS TAIL AS A LEVER . . 7 1 THE JERBOA KANGAROO . 75 A SEA-HORSE ANCHORED BY ITS TAIL 78 SPINY TAIL OF A SWIFT 79 THE THRESHER SHARK 82 ARMED TAIL OF THE STING-RAY QO A JERBOA, SHOWING TUFTED TAIL 94 A FAMILY OF COYOTES 98 THE AMERICAN BADGER . Il8 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. xi Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PACK FOUR COMMON SHREWS 126 HEADS AND FEET OF MOLES 129 SKULL OF THE BADGER 139 ELEPHANTS PILING LOGS UPON RAILWAY CARS . . .156 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. THE CANADA PORCUPINE 187 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. SKULL OF THE CANADA PORCUPINE 197 THE COMMON NORTHERN SKUNK 2O8 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. SKULL OF A SKUNK 2l6 THE WOODCHUCK 250 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. SKULL OF THE WOODCHUCK 259 RACCOONS IN THE TREE-TOPS 273 Drawn by Harley D. Nichols. SKULL OF THE RACCOON 287 WILD NEIGHBORS OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS DOWN past my window, as I sit writing beside it, falls a twig from the black oak at the corner of the house. Half a minute later another sinks wavering downward, buoyed by its broad leaves, which are green and healthy. This happens in July, far in advance of their natural time to fall. What is the cause ? A glance informs me. One of our gray squirrels is out on the end of an over- hanging limb, and I am just in time to see him bite off another leafy twig and carry it away. It is evident that he had dropped the other one acci- dentally. What is he doing ? I vault out of the window, and keep him in view as he makes his way nearly to the summit of a tall white oak, where he leaves his branch as a contribution to a half bushel or so of sticks and leaves lodged in a convenient notch. Another squirrel is there, and together they scramble over the mass, packing and entangling it together, and occasionally disappear- 2 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. ing into its interior, showing that it is hollow. There seems, however, to be no special entrance, the inmates pushing their way into the centre, and escaping from it wherever it seems easiest to part the twigs. I have never seen more than one pair at work upon any one nest. The work is done mainly in the early morning, and the task is ac- complished very speedily. I know this particular pair of squirrels very well. They have been tenants of the grove ever since we came to live in this edge of the city, and though the town has now grown beyond and around us, and the grove is given a perpetual moonlight from the electric lamp on the corner, the trees and bushes remain. In midsummer they may indulge their fondness for toadstools, upon which, during August, they seem almost wholly to subsist. Nuts and acorns come with each re- turning autumn, and in midwinter provender is spread upon friendly window-sills. Almost the only advantage the squirrels have taken of civilization, however, has been to occupy the boxes that my benevolent neighbor, Dr. J. P. Phillips, has put up for them in the trees, which are tenanted more or less all the year round, one family occupying each box and tree by itself as long as it wishes, and putting in its own furniture a new bedroom set of grass and soft leaves. Of these boxes they distinctly prefer those which . are simply sections of hollow logs, probably because I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 3 nearest like the natural cavities in decayed tree- trunks chosen (in cold latitudes) by the squirrels as their home ; but as none of our pets had been forest bred, this preference seems to have been dictated by an inherited taste. By midsummer these tenements become so hot and vermin-infested that the squirrels leave them and construct bowers of leaves, as my friends in the oak were doing when they attracted my attention ; and they occa- sionally inhabit them all winter, when the family nestles into the fluffy mass of loose leaves and grass forming the centre of the ball, and thus keeps warm. Though their nests and burrows become more or less infected with vermin, all our squirrels are exceedingly cleanly animals, and spend much time in rubbing their faces and cleansing their own fur and that of their young ones. " When they acci- dentally step into the water," writes Godman, "they make use of their bushy tail for the purpose of drying themselves, passing it several times through their hands." This squirrel is the one which in the older books is called the Northern gray squirrel, Sciurns migra- torius, in contrast with the Southern gray squirrel. Several other closely related species have been described from the interior and the Pacific coast, besides the very distinct "fox," "red," "flying," and other sharply distinguished members of the family. Certain differences of size and coat notice- 4 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. able between types of our gray squirrel from widely separated regions, accompanied by local peculiari- ties of habit, at first misled naturalists, but only one species is now recognized, Sciurus carolinensis. The first litter of young among the wild gray squirrels is seen in March in the warmer parts of the country, and somewhat later in the more north- ern States and in Canada. At least one more brood usually follows before winter. Our friends in the grove, however, sure of food and lodging, bring out their broods with little regard to season. One female, which has been known to us for years as the " mother squirrel," seems rarely without a family ; and Dr. Phillips assures me that he has known her to bear four litters in a single twelve- month, thus braving all sorts of weather. This exhibits the hardihood of these little ani- mals. No weather seems cold enough to daunt them. They endure the semi-arctic climate north of Lake Superior, remain all the year on the peaks of the Adirondacks, where their only food is the seeds of the black spruce, and appear in midwinter in Manitoba; but when a sleet storm comes, and every branch and twig is encased in ice, then the squirrel stays at home. I remember one such storm which was of unusual severity and did vast damage. The ice clothed the trees for several days in suc- cession, and the imprisoned animals became very hungry. The Doctor and I had swung from tree to tree a line of bridges made of poles along which I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 5 the squirrels scampered, no less to their delight than to ours, often leaping one over the other with extraordinary agility and grace when two met on this single-track, air-line road. One of these bridges led to a window-sill in each residence, where food was often spread, and it was amusing to see the circumspection with which, at last, they crept toward it along the icy poles, dig- ging their claws into the glazed surface, and often slipping astride or almost off the bridge. In the tree-tops, where they rush and leap at full speed, they are by no means safe from falling, but usually manage to catch hold somewhere, often by only a single toe, apparently, yet are able to lift the body up, like gymnasts, to a firmer foothold. Their strength is remarkable, especially in the re- gion of the great hams, whose development ac- counts for the really astonishing leaping powers these animals possess. Should they fall clear to the ground, as some- times happens, they alight right side up like a cat, and seem none the worse for the accident. The feet are wide-spread in such a case, and the loose skin over the ribs is stretched and flattened out very perceptibly. It would seem only a step from that condition to the parachute with which the flying-squirrel is provided ; but if the development of this formation in the latter came about through natural selection, it must have begun very long ago, for Cope has found a fossil (A llomys), which 6 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. he considers representative of the flying-squirrel type, as far back as the Jurassic. I have read of a Mexican squirrel that' was thrown from a cliff several hundred feet high, as an experiment, which spread its body and settled easily to a safe alight- ing upon the ground. Dr. C. C. Abbott notes that a certain sycamore near his home on the Delaware was avoided by the squirrels, and accounts for it by the supposi- tion that its scaly bark caused them too many falls ; but they are incessantly climbing the shag- bark hickories, far worse than the buttonball in the matter of roughness. The latter tree, however, rewards them in nuts, while the sycamore had nothing to give them, and the truth probably is that Abbott's squirrels were wise enough not to inconvenience themselves for nothing. The spring and early summer is most uniformly the season of reproduction, and this is the period when we see least of our pets. The mothers are awaiting the birth of their annual, or perhaps semi- annual broods, and spend most of their time at rest in their homes, while all the males of the grove go wandering away to visit other temporary bachelors. To call them all temporary husbands, would be nearer truth, however, for, so far as we can dis- cover, the mating is only for a single season, and as soon as gestation begins, the mothers become vixenish, and not only turn their husbands out-of- doors, but expel them from the premises. I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS *] Usually four kittens arrive in one litter, blind and helpless, and during the first month remain within the nest, closely attended by the mother, who permits no other squirrel even her pre- sumed mate to come near her. Each family, in fact, pre-empts a tree, and their sense of prop- erty is so strong that usually a trespasser will depart with little resistance, as if conscious of being where he has no right. Old males will sometimes kill their young, so that the mother does well to keep all at a distance. At the end of a month the young are half grown, and begin to scramble awkwardly about their door- way, yet the mother won't let them leave the nest until she thinks they are fully ready. One morning in the middle of October I ob- served that a family of four young squirrels was venturing forth from a box just outside my study window. They were not more than six weeks old, and were very timid. It was not often that more than two or three would appear at once, and one of these seemed much farther advanced than the rest, while another was very babyish. Their prime characteristic was inquisitiveness. What a fine and curious new world was this they had been introduced to ! How much there was to see ! How many de- lightful things to do ! They ceaselessly investigated everything about them with minute attention, and had very pretty ways, such as a habit of clasping each other in their arms around the neck. They 8 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAI'. frequently scratched and stroked one another, and once I saw one diligently combing another's tail with its fore feet. The tail, indeed, which is flat, and has the wavy hair growing laterally from a careful parting along the muscular midrib, is an object of great pride to its owner. It is, no doubt, useful and comforting as a wrapper in cold weather, and certainly assists the agile acrobat as a balancing-pole ; but that it is highly appreciated purely as an ornament, is very evident from the abashed demeanor of the little animal when a portion of its brush is lost. The generic name Sciurns (from which comes "squirrel," through Old French esquirel) is de- rived from Greek words meaning a creature which sits under the shadow of its tail, and the name shade-tail is in actual use in some of the Southern States to-day. We might appropriately translate the Greek in this case as designating an animal whose tail puts all the rest of him into the shade. Gradually they gain strength and confidence, and then you will see how far the liveliness of the young can surpass even the tireless activity of old squirrels. Both old and young are exceedingly fond of play, springing from the ground as if in a high-jumping match, and turning regular summer- saults in the grass ; but the most amusing thing is this: Finding a place where the tip of a tough branch hangs almost to the ground, they will leap up and catch it, sometimes with only one hand, I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 9 and then swing back and forth with the greatest glee, just like boys who discover a grape-vine in the woods or a dangling rope in a gymnasium. These and many similar antics seem to be done "just for fun." The kittens continue to be nursed by the mother until they have grown to be almost as heavy as herself. It seems impossible that her system can stand such a drain, in fact she does grow weak and thin, and my neighbor, who has been an ex- tremely close observer of their economy for several years, has come to the conclusion that the mother weans the kittens gradually by giving them food which she has regurgitated, or, at any rate, has thoroughly chewed up in her own mouth. No animal is more motherly than one of these parent squirrels, and it is delightful to watch her behavior when the nearly grown brood has begun to make short excursions, and is undergoing in- struction. All the other families in the grove take an interest in the proceedings, and chatter about it at a great rate ; but if one comes too near and at- tempts any interference in the instruction, he is likely to be driven away most vigorously by the jealous mother. Every morning lessons in climb- ing and nut-hunting are given, and pretty scenes are enacted. The pride of the little mother as she leads her train out on some aerial path is very noticeable. They are slow and timid about follow- ing. Squirrels must learn to balance themselves I0 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. on the pliant limbs by slow degrees. It is many a long day after they are able to chase one another up and down and under and around a rough oak trunk, in the liveliest game of tag ever witnessed, before they can skip about the branches and leap from one to the other with confidence in their security. The patient mother understands this, and encourages them very gently to "try, try again." I remember one such lesson. The old one marched ahead slowly, uttering low notes, as if to say : " Come on, my dears. Don't be afraid ! " Every little while she would stop, and the two well- grown children following would creep up to her, and put their arms around her neck in the most human fashion, as if protesting that it was almost too hard a task. This loving-kindness is extended to other young squirrels whenever no question of family rivalry interferes, as is shown, in a most amiable way, by incidents I have narrated elsewhere. In spite of this I do not believe that, broadly speaking, the gray squirrel is a very intelligent animal, or has much brain-power. On the con- trary, to my mind this squirrel, except within a very limited field, where a part of his brain has been developed by his necessities, is an unusually stupid animal. Dr. T. Wesley Mills of Montreal, who has made a study of brute psychology, has essayed to show that squirrels are the most intelli- gent of rodents ; but even granting this (which I I OUR GRA Y SQ UIRRELS 1 1 doubt, when I think of the rat), little is proved, and even Dr. Mills places the general intelligence of the red, the flying, and the ground squirrels superior to that of our gray, which he concedes to be deficient in docility. Nevertheless, these animals within a certain nar- row range of acts and motions are certainly saga- cious ; and they are somewhat teachable. It took our squirrels a very short time to learn that cracked nuts of several varieties, grains of corn, and other edibles were to be had on the window-sills. The squirrels know, furthermore, that the nuts are placed there from the inside, and if, as occasionally happens, the sill is empty, they will often stand up and tap upon the glass, as if to attract notice to their hunger. Moreover, they know very well when the family meal-hours come around, and will present them- selves at the windows pretty regularly then, since they have learned to expect more than ordinary attention at that time ; and they do so even when, occasionally, the meal is omitted, so that no noise or odors of preparation could have apprised them of the time. The Doctor has had a few advance timorously to take food from his fingers, as the tame squirrels on Capitol Hill in Richmond, and in some other city parks, will do from almost any one. It is plain that they recognize all of us as ac- quaintances from their indifference to our presence, 12 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. while they will raise a great clamor whenever a stranger walks about under the trees. More than this, they seem to know the Doctor's horse and carriage, and pay no attention to its goings and comings, but become excited whenever another vehicle enters the premises. They will stay quietly eating on the window-sill while one of us sits just inside the glass, but when they see a visitor in the room will almost invariably seize a nut and scamper away as fast as they can go. Furthermore their actions convince us that when, as often happens in midsummer, Dr. Phillips meets one of our squir- rels in some far-away street, the little animal recognizes him and shows its confidence in his accustomed kindness ; but I have never been recognized in that way, to my knowledge. As pets these squirrels are not greatly in de- mand, not so much so as the flying-squirrels, which crawl inside your coat and appeal to your affection at once. The grays are so mischievous, trying their strong teeth on everything and dam- aging furniture and hangings so rapidly, that we never dared admit them to the house on terms of intimacy, and as for confining them in a cage, it was never thought of. In spite of some stories I have heard and read, I am under the impression that an attempt to make a real pet of one would prove tiresome, if it didn't fail altogether. The animal is pretty to look at, and pleasant to handle, but seems to have I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 13 little affection, or, at any rate, makes little demon- stration of it. It is selfish. It wants you as a friend only for what it can get out of you, and these are not terms upon which love grows. Its big eyes are like jewels, but they never melt with the fond delight of the dog in your companionship and approval. The squirrel may climb to your shoulder, and explore your pockets for sweets; but never will he leap into your lap and curl up there for the enjoyment of being with you, and purr contentedly over it as does your cat. He has no monkey-like antics with which to amuse you no melodious tones to beguile your ear ; and one who knows him as an acrobat of the tree-tops can only look with pity upon his performance within the limits of a whirling treadmill, such as is usu- ally attached to squirrel cages. Though the squirrels in this rus in urbe of our grove have few enemies, they have never lost their wariness. Sometimes a tremendous clamor will break out in the tree-tops a mixture of sharp ch-r-r-r-rs and whines, easily intelligible to us as notes of alarm and indignation. These usually mean that a strange dog or cat is somewhere near. No hawks or owls (save the little screech-owl) ever come to disturb them, and, of course, none of the wild-cats, weasels, or large serpents which kill them in the wild forest is here to molest or make them afraid, yet the population of the grove never seems to increase, though the eight or ten pairs 14 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. more than double their numbers every six months. The explanation is that the young leave us on coming to maturity. As a rule, their family had moved from the house where they were born to new quarters as soon as the young could take care of themselves, and here a new litter would soon be forthcoming. These family flittings are often amusing specta- cles. Sometimes the mother transports her kit- tens when blind and hairless, carrying them in her teeth ; but generally she waits until they are able to travel. I recall one instance where early in the morning a mother had got her kittens down from the old nest to the end of a bridge that ran across to the chinquapin, in which her new home was to be. But to go out on that bridge was too much for the youngsters. She would run ahead, and one or two of them would creep after her a few yards, then suddenly become panic-stricken and scramble back. Again and again did the little mother, with endless patience and pains, counsel and entice them, until at last one was induced to keep a stout heart until he was safely over. Then ensued another interval of chattering and repeated trials and failures, and so the second and third were finally got across. It was now noon, and the poor squirrel looked quite fagged out, her ears drooped, her fur was ruffled, her movements had lost their verve, her tail hung low, and her cries became I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 15 sharp and short. Her patience was exhausted. Instead of tenderly coaxing the last one of the four, she scolded at him, driving rather than lead- ing the terrorized youngster along the shaky cable, and when it had reached the further tree, she seized it in her mouth, and fairly shoved it through the door of the new box. It is probable that in their wild state, before their forest range was restricted and men began to slaughter them, all the arboreal squirrels were able by longevity and rapid increase to more than keep pace with the deaths in their ranks. Their natural term of life probably approaches twenty years. We have known continuously for twelve years one female who was apparently an old mother when she came, and is yet hale and hearty. During this time she has regularly produced at least two broods a year. At such a rate squirrels would multiply until they overbalanced the ratio of num- bers assigned them by nature. Accounts by early writers show that they must formerly have been amazingly numerous. Godman says that the gray- coat was a fearful scourge to colonial farmers, and that Pennsylvania paid ,8000 in bounties for their scalps during 1749 alone. This meant the destruc- tion of 640,00x5 within a comparatively small district. In the early days of Western settlement regular hunts were organized by the inhabitants, who would range the woods in two companies from morning till night, vying as to which band should T 6 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. bring home the greater number of trophies ; the quantities thus killed are almost incredible now. Out of these excessive multitudes grew those sudden and seemingly aimless migrations of innu- merable hosts of squirrels which justly excited wonder half a century ago. Thousands upon thousands, of this species usually, would suddenly appear in a locality, moving steadily in one direc- tion. These migrations occurred only in warm weather, and at intervals of about five years, and all that I have been able to find notes upon were headed eastward. Nothing stopped the column, which would press forward through forests, prair ries, and farm fields, over mountains and across broad rivers, such even as the Niagara, Hudson, and Mississippi. This little creature hates the water and is a bad swimmer, paddling clumsily along with his whole body and tail submerged. A large part, therefore, would be drowned, and those which managed to reach the opposite shore were so weary that many could be caught by the hand. Of course every floating object would be seized upon by the desperate swimmers, and thus arose the pretty fable that the squirrels ferried them- selves over by launching and embarking upon chips, raising their tails as sails for their tiny rafts. The motive which impelled the little migrants to gather in great companies from a wide area, and then in a vast coherent army to begin a movement, I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 17 and continue it steadily in one direction for hun- dreds of miles, is hard to discover. It did not seem to be lack of food, for they were always fat. The migration was leisurely performed, too never in too great a hurry to prevent feasting upon any fields of corn or sometimes of unripe grain that came in the way. Such a visitation, therefore, was like a flight of devouring locusts, one chronicler alleging that the sound they made in the maize in stripping off the husks to get at the succulent kernels was equal to that of a field full of men at harvesting. There is no difficulty, moreover, in judging of the effect such migrations, would have in restoring equilibrium in sciurine pop- ulation, since, of the surplus which started, few sur- vived long, and the remnant at last faded away among the Alleghanies on in some other distant locality without seeming to increase the number of squirrels there. The curiosity and gayety of the gray squirrel are perhaps his strongest personal characteristics. Nothing unusual escapes his attention, and he is never satisfied until he knows all about it. He is the Paul Pry, the news-gatrierer, of the woods. When a new building is in course of erection in or near the grove, the workmen no sooner leave it than half a dozen squirrels go over and under and through it, examining every part. If I trim away branches and lay them in a heap, or repair a fence, or do anything else, Mr. Gray inspects it 1 8 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. thoroughly the moment my back is turned ; and when once the house was reoccupied after a long vacancy, we caught the squirrels peeping in at the windows and hopping gingerly to the sill of each open door, to make sure the matter was all right. It is most amusing to watch them on these tours of inspection. Two or three times a day each one makes the rounds of the premises, racing along the fences, and into one tree after another, as if to make certain that nothing had gone wrong. He will halt on the summit of each post, rear up, and look all about him ; or, if his keen ears hear an unwonted sound, will drop down upon all-fours, ready to run, his tail held over his back like a silver-edged plume, twitching nervously and jerk- ing with each sharp utterance, as though it were connected with his vocal organs by a string. " All his movements," said Thoreau, "imply a spectator." The excessive inquisitiveness I have described often gets them into trouble, and is taken advan- tage of by their enemies. A wise serpent will coil himself at the foot of a tree where squirrels are playing, and will slowly wave his tail or display his red tongue, sure that the squirrels will see him. Doubtless they know him for what he is a deadly enemy; but they cannot resist a nearer look at the curious object and that extraordinary motion. Whining, chr-r-r-ring, barking, they creep down the tree-trunk. The snake lies ready, his unwink- ing eyes fixed upon the excited little quadruped. i OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 1 9 Step by step, impelled by a fatal desire to learn more about that fascinating thing in the grass, Bunny steals forward and is lost ! The male squirrels come back from their sum- mer vagabondage looking very much the worse for wear, the result of many a battle, no doubt, for they are incorrigible fighters. In the season of courtship the males are especially pugnacious, and will bite one another severely, or hurl one another from lofty limbs. 1 The red squirrels, or chickarees, though hardly half as big, will whip the grays in a running fight every time ; but when it comes to a clinch, the superior size and weight of the gray give him the victory. There is an eternal feud between them because the gray squir- rels are continually raiding the hoards of nuts and acorns which the provident chickarees stow away in odd corners against the coming of winter. The holes in our long post-and-rail fence is a favorite place of deposition, and in autumn this fence is pretty regularly patrolled by a chickaree. If a reconnoitring gray even approaches this fence, the red will dash at him like wildfire. One day a pan of shelled corn stood outside the 1 There is no truth in the long-lived supposition that the victor in one of these knightly combats will emasculate his conquered foe. The only explanation, apart from an anatomical one, seems to be that the testicles of many squirrels are destroyed by a parasitic worm that is peculiar to those organs in the sciuri. They are also much troubled by subcutaneous parasites, particularly larvae of flesh-flies of the genus (Estrus. 20 WILD NEIGHBORS, CHAP, t door of the Doctor's barn, and a chipmunk (the striped ground-squirrel) approached it cautiously from one side while a rat came from the barn on the other. They met at the corn, whereupon, with- out an instant's hesitation, the chipmunk sprang into the air like a cat, and alighted squarely on the back of the rat, which, astounded and cowed by this unlooked-for attack, turned tail, shook off his fierce little foe, and raced for shelter, leaving chippie to fill his cheek-pouches at leisure and go home in triumph. The only bird-enemy is the blue-jay, who seems to love to tease the squirrels in winter, just for mis- chief ; and two jays, working together, can make it very unpleasant for Bunny. One will dash at him with a joyous shout, whereupon the scared and nimble animal will slip around to the further side of the tree-trunk, "talking back" the while in the angriest language he knows ; but there the other jay is ready for him, and he must immediately dodge back again to where the first is waiting to dart at him a second time, striking with wings and beak until both birds are tired of the sport, or the squirrel bolts to some place of refuge. Robins and other thrushes are quick to drive away any gray squirrel that approaches the tree in which they are nesting, an enmity which seems to show that this species is guilty of despoil- ing birds' nests ; but there is no good evidence of this crime. The red squirrel, however, is well SKULL AND DENTITION OF A GRAY SQUIRREL. Side view, upper and lower aspects, and lower jaw. Natural size. Alter Baird, 21 CHAP. I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 2$ known as an incorrigible nest-robber and bird- catcher, killing fledglings as well as sucking eggs : sometimes, no doubt, his misdeeds have been laid at the door of the innocent gray ; and wise robins take no chances. The flying-squirrel is likewise overfond of birds' eggs. In another point my observations were at vari- ance with the books, which credit this squirrel with somewhat nocturnal habits. Ours were often abroad late into the dusk, and were out with the dawn : but certainly they were never outside their houses during the night, even in bright moonlight. Merely wet weather does not daunt them, but a heavy downpour of rain naturally drives them to cover. They never take a water-bath, so far as I know ; but they are fond of rubbing and rolling in loose sand, by way, I suppose, of ridding their fur of vermin. In winter they are more active, if possible, than in summer, racing about the trees at a furious rate, as if invigorated to fresh activity by the keen air. Yet the book-writers insist that their habit is other- wise, and have described extensively their alleged hibernation. Certainly our Connecticut squirrels neither hibernate nor become torpid. During the twenty-five years they have been under close ob- servation here in New Haven there has never been a day excepting very sleety ones, perhaps when they did not appear. The same denial must be made in respect to the 24, WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. hoards of food reported laid up for winter use. Our grays store no " hoards " in the ordinary sense of the word, though both our red and our ground squirrels do so. What the gray squirrels do is this : as soon as nuts and acorns begin to ripen in the autumn, they gather them with great industry, and bury them one by one, separately. They do this diligently and furtively, attracting no more attention than they can help. Hopping about in the grass until they have chosen a place, a hole, perhaps two inches deep, is hastily scraped out, the nut is pushed to the bottom and covered up. The animal then stamps down the earth and hurries away, hoping it has not been seen. They never bury the food given them or found in the summer, but in the fall will save and bury along with their wild provender the nuts and occasionally grains of corn taken from the window-sills. Whether any of these are dug up before mid- winter I do not know ; I think not. The squirrels wander off into the woods when the mast is ripe, and get fat upon the oily food. But when this harvest is over, and their stores must be drawn upon, their ability in discovering them is wonder- ful. They seem to know precisely the spot in the grass where each nut is buried, and will go directly to it; and I have seen them hundreds of times, when the snow was more than a foot deep, wade floundering through it straight to a certain point, I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 2$ dive down, perhaps clear out of sight, and in a moment emerge with the nut in their jaws. Two hypotheses have been advanced in explana- tion of this unerring recovery of their treasures. One is that the animal remembers. But the diffi- culty of assuming this, under all the circumstances, is so great, that it seems easier to believe the alter- native explanation, namely, that the treasure is found by aid of the sense of smell. It certainly seems to us that a hickory nut, after having been buried three or four months, and covered with a foot or two of snow, would be as unsmellable as anything could be ; but it won't do to limit the sensitiveness of a squirrel's nose until we know more about it than we do at present. At any rate, nearly, if not quite all, the nuts buried are exhumed before spring, for few hickory or oak saplings spring up in our grove, as would happen if any considerable number of seeds were left in the ground. Thoreau has a great deal to say on this topic in his suggestive essay on the Natural History of Massachusetts (in "Walden"), and credits the squirrels with doing an immense amount of tree-planting. In confinement these squirrels will often attempt to bury nuts in the floor of their cages, going through the digging, covering, and patting motions as if the article were really buried. A writer in The American Naturalist for 1883 described this behavior on the part of a flying-squirrel which had 2 6 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. been bred in the cage from babyhood, and thus must have acted purely under the impulse of in- herited tendency or habit ; moreover, this captive chose out of a large assortment only the acorns and hazel-nuts that grew wild in that locality, never attempting to bury peanuts, pecans, and other foreign fruits, although it ate them readily enough. Darwin, in his book on Earthworms, alludes to this practice, and uses it as an illustra- tion of his doctrine that " the instincts of even the higher animals are often followed in a senseless or purposeless manner." Our squirrels do not limit themselves to nuts, however. They are fond of buds, especially in the spring, devouring the maple and elm buds in particular ; and in summer they feed largely on fungi and berries. Raspberries and strawberries please them especially well, and they are accused of choosing the biggest and ripest ones a very sensible proceeding. They will eat dry kernels of Indian corn, if they are hungry, but delight in it when it is soft and milky, and in the early days of farming in the Western States, where the animals were very numerous, they committed depredations so serious that boys were set to patrol the field and drive them away. I am convinced that they also eat insects. The ripening of the mast in the fall is the squir- rel's gala-day, and the beginning of his work-day, too. He does not wait for the nuts to get ripe, I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 27 but attacks their green husks, and his paws get richly stained with their brown juices. His power- ful chisel-teeth quickly strip the shagbark nuts, but the clinging shucks of the pignut hickory are cut through. So rapidly does he work that a hard dry walnut will be opened and cleaned out in less than a minute. Those squirrels that inhabit co- niferous forests subsist upon the seeds of the spruce and pine. These are procured by snipping off the scales, beginning at the butt end of the cone and following the spiral arrangement. They are also said by a writer in the Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club (VII, 54) to suck sap from certain trees. Certain differences of size and coat noticeable between types of the North American gray squir- rel from widely separated parts of the country, accompanied by local peculiarities of habit, led at first to the naming of several supposed species. This doubt in the past as to specific unity well illustrates the principle that variations in size and color among all North American mammals and birds are correlated with geographical distribution, and seem to conform to varying conditions of climate. In general, it may be said that our ani- mals show an enlargement of peripheral parts, that is, have longer limbs, tails, etc., in southern latitudes than toward the northern limits of their range ; that the colors also increase in intensity southward ; and third, that colors are more in- 2 8 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. tense in regions of copious rainfall than in arid areas. The squirrels exemplify these rules. In this species (carolinensis), for instance, a steady grada- tion may be detected from the light pure gray of the upper parts, characteristic of New England specimens, to the yellowish dorsal fur of the Flor- ida type. In the fox-squirrels {Sciurus niger) of Wisconsin and Iowa the lower parts are only pale fulvous, in some specimens nearly white; about St. Louis they are strong, bright fulvous, and in lower Louisiana reddish fulvous or deep orange, while the back is far darker than northward. The same species fades westward from the bright speci- mens of the damp Mississippi Valley forests into a far paler variety along the dry edges of the Great Plains. The red squirrel (S. hudsonius) and the chipmunk (Tamias striatns) are also excellent illus- trations of the action of climatic influences under this law particularly the latter, whose color and stripes exhibited so many varieties between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts that early naturalists, having insufficient specimens, described confidently as several species what is now conceded to be only one. The relative amount of moisture and shade seem to be the determining causes of this diversity, drouth and the blanching power of the sun in the high dry plains fading the pigments in the hair, or perhaps checking their deposition. The I OUR GRAY SQUIRRELS 2Q effect of natural selection in adapting the animal (in color) to its surroundings, by tending to make it less conspicuous in an exposed than in a con- cealed habitat, is also to be considered here. Quite distinct from this, however, seems to be the tendency to melanism, which is so strongly marked in several of our sciurids. Among flying- squirrels, red squirrels, and chipmunks, a black one is as rare as an albino probably more rare ; but in the cases of the gray and the fox squirrels black examples are extremely common in some parts of the country, and are popularly considered a wholly separate species. But no such rule of climate as mentioned above seems to control this phenomenon, since black or dusky forms of both species are as likely to be southern as northern in their habitat. Where melanism occurs, it is likely to prevail over a considerable district, sometimes nearly if not quite to the exclusion of squirrels of the normal tint. This shows that, though sporadic, it " runs in families," descending from parents to young ; yet not inevitably so, for many litters pro- duced by black parents will contain a member or two gray, or red, or grizzled, and black and normal individuals mate freely. The "color-line" is not drawn in sciurine society. Black ones, however, are never, or very rarely, seen east of the Hudson River ; and, furthermore, the northeastern black is often rusty or brownish in tone, rather than pure, especially in its summer pelage. Curiously enough WILD NEIGHBORS CHAI'. I it was a specimen of this abnormal variety that first reached the hands of Linnaeus, and conse- quently the specific name of the common fox- squirrel, normally vulpine red in color, as its name indicates, is niger a fact that has led to much confusion in the minds of foreign writers upon American mammals. A RED SQUIRREL. II THE FATHER OF GAME I HAVE frequently noticed in menageries a start of surprise in the eyes of persons before a puma's cage, when they learned that this splendid cat was American. It somehow informs our prosaic northern forests with a foreign, romantic, and adventurous spirit, to find such a denizen in them, for pictures of the lion, tiger, and leopard so fill our imaginations that all large and fierce beasts seem necessarily tropical. That, however, is by no means the fact. Even in America the jaguar wanders north .to the Indian Territory or once did and south into Patagonia, while the puma is to be found from Canada to Cape Horn. Indeed, the wonder is that any natural barriers, less than wide spaces of water, restrict the range of these powerful animals. What pre- vented the jaguar, able to live along the western bank of the lower Mississippi, from spreading east- ward, at least throughout the South Atlantic States ? Yet we have no record that he ever did so, although " moving accidents of flood " must again and again have placed individuals and pairs on the eastern D 33 34 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. shore of the Father of Waters, whose current the jaguar is quite competent to swim, if he likes. As for the puma, he possesses the whole continent as far north at least as the watershed of Hudson Bay, in the east, while on the western coast he follows the mountains to the middle of British Columbia. Southward he is plentiful throughout the tropics, and less so even to the Straits of Magellan. No other kind of cat, not 'only, but no other sort of land animal whatever (not domesticated) equals this species in north and south range (100 de- grees); and that implies that no other is called upon to adapt itself to such a diversity of seasons, climatic conditions, food, and competition. It has to meet not only the cardinal contrasts of climate between tropical and subarctic zones, but, as it is widely distributed on both continents, it encounters all the differences that can be found between life in Canadian spruce-woods or on the high cordil- leras from Alaska to Chile, and the moist, feverish lowlands from the Mexican coasts to southern Brazil. One would expect to see in such a species -the more so as the individual animals are not far wanderers, but remarkably stationary in habi- tat wide variations from the type; but, on the contrary, few animals exhibit less diversity in size, structure, or external appearance. A comparison of the puma with the jaguar is highly interesting in respect to color as well as in the matter of distribution. While the yellow hide II THE FATHER OF GAME 35 of the jaguar is adorned everywhere with black spots, the adult puma has no spots whatever, ex- cept that the lips are black, with a patch of white on each side of the muzzle, the outer rim of the ear is black, and sometimes the tip of the tail. Its upper parts are a uniform pale fox-red, more or less dull in certain lights, owing to the fact that each hair is fawn gray, red only at the tip ; this color is more intense along the spine and decidedly lighter around the eyes, while the throat, belly, and inside of the legs are reddish white. The color is so much like that of the Virginia deer that their backs could hardly be distinguished at a little distance in fact, precisely this mistake has been made by astonished hunters; and on the Amazons the puma is called "false deer." How helpful such a resemblance would prove to this wily beast, when stealing through the grass upon a herd of deer or any other prey that would have no reason to be alarmed by the known presence of what it took to be a deer, is at once evident. The common term " American lion " goes back to the earliest days of European discovery on this continent, when the colonists supposed the hides the Indians brought in were those of the true lion, explaining the absence of maned examples by the theory that they had seen only female skins. "California lion," and "mountain lion," "red tiger," "panther" (or "painter"), are less excusable misnomers. " Puma " is said to be 36 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Peruvian, and "cougar" is a shortening, through the French, 1 of a native Brazilian term ; while "catamount," now rarely heard, is borrowed from Europe, and is confusing, because often applied to the lynx. As everybody recognizes the advantage to the animal of the inconspicuousness of its plain reddish coat, and recalls at once the similar case of the lion, whose tawny hide harmonizes well with the sere grass of the South African karoo, or with the arid plains of the Sahara, Arabia, or Turkestan, it is customary to say hurriedly that this is the outcome of a beneficent process of natural selec- tion. The same persons will tell you that the elaborate spotting of the jaguar is another striking example of the beneficence of the same law, acting within a different sphere, pointing out that the spots of its yellow hide harmonize so exactly with the dappling of the sunlight as it falls through the trembling leaves as to make the beast invisible to an unsuspecting eye. They may be right in these deductions, but there are certain difficulties in making the same rule apply to both, or, still more, to the case of the puma. The jaguar confines his career to forests and 1 Bates, in "The Naturalist on the Amazons," explains in a foot- note on sassu-ardna, " false deer," that " the old zoologist Marcgrave called the puma the cuguacurana, possibly (the f's being soft or f) a misspelling of sassu-ardna; hence the name couguar employed by French zoologists." Alfred Russell Wallace ("Travels on the Amazon ") spells it sasurana and attributes it to the Lingoa Geral. ii THE FATHER OF GAME 37 swamps, among whose flickering lights his form is certainly easily lost to view, as also are those of the margay and ocelot, though the marblings of the latter are very different from the jaguar's sharp black rosettes ; but unfortunately for the correlative half of the argument, the puma is also an inhabitant of the very same deep woods that are the home of the jaguar, ocelot, and margay in the south, and of the much-spotted lynx in the north ; and so are the jaguarondi and eyra, neither of which have any variegations of hide to imitate the dapplings of light and shadow. Another thing : We are told that the bold stripes of the Bengal tiger match so well with the vertical lights and shadows among the tall grasses and bamboos of an Indian jungle as to conceal that beast almost entirely when he lies within it ; but a similar covert is a favorite lurking-place, along the River Plate, for our jaguar, yet he does not need, or at any rate does not possess, the vertical stripes regarded as indispensable to his East Indian cousin under the same circumstances. When one surveys the whole family, he dis- covers that there are as many spotted cats on the plains and deserts as in the forests, and vice versa ; and then, remembering that the habits of all are substantially the same, he begins to doubt the value of any conclusion in this direction drawn from one species. Moreover, it must not be for- gotten that the cats are for the most part nocturnal 38 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. animals, so that their color is of no great conse- quence, since the wisdom of the ages declares that "all cats are gray in the dark." The truth seems to be that there is a very forcible inherited ten- dency to spottedness in this family and its imme- diate allies, as the civets. In most members this persists in a remarkable degree, with interesting variations of pattern ; while a minority have nearly outgrown it, and a few have lost the markings altogether, though even these, it should be noted, are born with spotted hides. There seems no reason to suppose that natural selection has had anything traceable to do with the origin of these markings, and but little to do with their modification or dis- appearance. As to the size of the puma, one reads of speci- mens ten or eleven feet long ; but no satisfactory evidence exists of a length greater than eight feet, measured from tip of nose to tip of tail, and the average will fall below seven feet. The jaguar has a longer and heavier body, but its tail is far shorter. Proportions vary somewhat, those from the tropics being a trifle larger than specimens taken in cool latitudes, following the law that an animal will reach its greatest size where the con- ditions are most favorable to its kind as a whole. The comparative fulness of the skull forward gives to the head a rounded solidity not usual in cats, and bears out the creature's reputation for craft. This gives to the face, also, an expression II THE FATHER OF GAME 39 of intelligence quite different from the flat-headed, brutish, ferocity of many feline countenances. Yet, when the ears are laid flat back, the eyes half closed, the lips withdrawn in a snarl, and the animal crouched, with muscles tense and the corn- colored claws half-protruded, in readiness for a spring, its aspect is sufficiently terrifying. This animal, nevertheless, is probably the most cowardly and least dangerous of all the larger car- nivores. The South Americans dread it much less than the jaguar, and the Indians of our continent would far rather meet it than a bear. The in- stances are few where it has seriously resisted men when it could get away, and then it was almost in- variably in defence of its young ; and still fewer are the instances where it has made an unpro- voked attack. One has often, it is true, ap- proached a lone wood-chopper, or dogged the trail of a hunter or traveller through the wilderness, or prowled about some camp-fire or remote frontier cabin ; but this behavior was evidently dictated in some cases by extreme hunger, but more often by mere curiosity and desire for company, and has been rarely followed by a harmful attack, though credible cases of its springing upon children have been recorded. To this timidity is largely due the easy and early extinction of the beast in the eastern half of the Union, where, had it possessed the courage and power of resistance shown by the Old World leop- 40 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. ard and tiger, it might have remained to this day a source of terror in many thinly settled neighbor- hoods, such as the Catskill Mountains, which are supposed to have been named in reference to it. The rocky wilds of northeastern Quebec and New Brunswick may shelter a few, and a small number of pairs still survives in the Adirondacks, although the bounty paid by the State since 1871 has nearly exterminated them there. Ten years ago one heard of an occasional panther in the Alleghanies, and some probably remain in the swamps along the western side of the lower Mississippi, and in the Ozarks; but the whole northern-central region of the Union has long been free from them. Prac- tically, therefore, we may say that the puma has disappeared east of the Black Hills and western Texas; yet a century has not elapsed since one was taken in Westchester County, N.Y., adjoining New York City. This animal seems never to have been very nu- merous much less so than bears, wolves, or lynxes. Nature, indeed, provides against undue multiplication of these powerful and predatory beasts. No machine with automatic governor, however delicate, equals the self-acting influences that preserve, in a state of nature, unbroken by civilized interferences, the balance of an equal chance for all a true animal socialism. Thus a single pair of these destructive and long-lived cats seems originally to have occupied alone a certain ii THE FATHER OF GAME 41 territory, the extent of which was determined by their ability to hunt over it, and to defend it from rivals of their own species, for they had nothing else to fear. It is an interesting speculation, indeed, whether the apparent cowardice of the northern puma is not in reality ignorance of danger, since he may not suppose that man is more to be feared than other large animals, whose attack he has no reason to dread, even though, as in the case of the moose and bison, he might hesitate to become himself the attacking party. The conspicuously greater cour- age of the African and Asiatic cats might easily have arisen from the need of frequently fighting for their quarry with competitors as capable as themselves, and from their constant encounters with large and well-armed game, such as the rhi- noceros, buffalo, and long-horned antelopes. Fierce battles are reported, however, as occurring between the California puma and grizzly bears. It is not the habit of the puma to wander far from the den, where a single family seems to make its home. Whether a mate is taken for life is not known, but at least it seems probable that a change of partners is not made with each recurring season. The male and female hunt separately, however, and sportsmen assert that the latter is the better hunter of the two. This, if true, is perhaps a result of greater need and more constant practice, since she must get food not only for herself, but for her 42 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. young, because the father does not summon his family to share with him a feast, as the African lion is said to do. The mother leads her half- grown kittens about with her, and doubtless gives them useful instruction; but, according to Merriam, she leaves them somewhat behind when actually in pursuit of prey, fetching them to share the results. The amatory season occurs during the early win- ter (varying according to latitude and climate), when the female's softened mood and desire for companionship apparently lead her to strange doings, for it is hard otherwise to account for the actions related of certain cougars that have in- sisted upon an unpleasantly close acquaintance with, rather than have made an attack upon, human beings. Thus several cases have been related as occurring in broad daylight in the State of Washington, where unarmed men or women have been approached by a puma, which came close, and even leaped upon them, knocking them down and scaring them nearly to death, then re- treated a little way, danced and rolled about, but at first, at least, offered no harm, beyond playfully seizing and tearing their clothes. Later, however, a realization of human helplessness, together with impatience at the lack of sympathy with feline humor, sometimes provoked a more savage attack. Nowhere is the puma more numerous and famil- iar, in spite of the war of extermination waged against it by the ranchmen, than on the pampas II THE FATHER OF GAME 43 of southern Argentina; and it is interesting to read the following from " Gold Diggings at Cape Horn,'' by an excellent observer, John R. Spears, the most recent writer upon Patagonia : " The lonely wayfarer is not often found there afoot, but men have been on the desert unmounted, and the panthers have come to play around them too. But it is not as a predatory cat that they come. It is as a playful kitten. Individual pan- thers play by themselves old ones as well as young by the hour. They will chase and paw and roll an upturned bush or a round rock or any moving thing, and lacking that will pretend to sneak up on an unwary game, crouching the while behind a bush or rock for concealment, to spring out at last and land on a hump of sand or a shadow. Then they turn round and do the same thing over again. When it is in this frame of mind, if a lone human being comes along, the panther is as glad to see him as a petted cat to see its mistress. It purrs and rolls over before him, and gallops from side to side, and makes no end of kitten-like motions, and all because of the exuberance of its youthful spirits. . . . The plains- men of all Argentina call the panther by a name which means ' friend of man.' ' The young are born as early as February in Central America, where a second litter may occa- sionally be produced, as it is stated that kittens have been taken in August ; but in the northern 44 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. United States the birth is considerably later. The period of gestation, according to observations in zoological gardens, varies from ninety-one to ninety- seven days. The kittens are brought forth among the mountains in some den beneath overhanging rocks; but in flat countries the mother secretes herself inside a dense thicket or cane-brake, where she prepares a bed of sticks and leaves. Four or five kittens may come at a birth, but usually only two or three; and Merriam thinks that in the East, at least, many more females are born than males. At first, as has been hinted, these kittens are covered with black spots and stripes, and the tail is ringed. Bonavia makes merry over the puzzled mind of the young father, when he beholds these varicolored offspring, and pictures the conjugal anxiety of the mother to convince her suspicious spouse that it is all right. The markings mostly 'disappear by the end of six months, but obscure reminders of them remain several months longer, and now and then are never quite outgrown. William A. Conklin, late keeper of the Central Park Menagerie, in New York, noted, from much ex- perience with them, that the kittens opened their eyes after eight or nine days, cut their front teeth in eighteen or twenty days, and were weaned when three months old. The cubs do not become well- grown before the end of the second year, and dur- ing most of this time associate with the mother, who is valiant in their defence ; and if we may II THE FATHER OF GAME 45 believe an account in that quaint old sportsmen's magazine, "The Cabinet of Natural History," pub- lished in Philadelphia in 1830-31, of a deadly attack by a cougar upon a bear, the explanation is probably found in the fear of a mother that her kittens were in danger. Dr. Merriam concludes that in the Adirondacks the puma breeds only once in two years. If this be true, it is a striking example of one of nature's limitations of these destructive beasts, which would seem, at first thought, to have a clear field for indefinite multiplication. But, though their food is ordinarily abundant, no active enemies are to be feared, and the climate holds no terrors, there are certain insidious foes that they are powerless to resist, in the form of parasites. To these, and especially to the internal sorts, the pumas, in com- mon with other cats, seem to be peculiarly lia- ble. Various nematodes (thread-worms), trematodes (flukes), and many kinds of tape-worms, are known to attack this family. Some of them grow in the stomach and bowels, until the animal perishes of exhaustion and starvation, while others penetrate the lungs or liver, or encyst themselves among the muscles, setting up there so fierce an inflammation as to cause death unless (as doubtless often hap- pens) the sufferer is sooner murdered by some savage rival. These parasites are taken into the system from the living animals upon which the cat feeds, especially from hares and other rodents. 46 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. This introduces the subject of the puma's food, which might be succinctly disposed of by the statement that he ate anything he could get his teeth upon in the way of flesh. As Spears pictu- resquely writes of it (in Patagonia) : " It claws down the whirring partridge, as she springs from her nest, which it afterward robs of its eggs ; it kills the ostrich as he sits on his nest, and then, after hiding his body, it returns to the nest and eats the eggs with gusto ; it snatches the duck or the goose from its feeding-place at the edge of a lagoon ; it crushes the shell of the waddling arma- dillo ; it digs the mouse from its nest in the grass ; it stalks the desert prairie-dog, and, dodging with easy niotion the fangs of the serpent, it turns to claw and strip out its life before it can coil to strike again. The mainstay of his natural bill of fare in the North was the Virginia deer, especially fawns and yearlings, and in South America the guanaco." Elks and moose could fight him off, as cattle are able to do, except when seized by surprise and from behind. In his admirable history of the quadrupeds of the Adirondacks, Dr. C. Hart Mer- riam gives the following lucid description of the cougar's method of hunting : " Panthers hunt both day and night, but un- doubtedly kill the larger part of their game after nightfall. When one scents a deer he leaps to the leeward and creeps stealthily toward it, as a cat does after a mouse. With noiseless tread and ii THE FATHER OF GAME 47 crouching form does he pass over fallen trees and ragged ledges, or through dense swamps and tan- gled thickets, till, if unobserved, within thirty or forty feet of his intended victim. If he can now attain a slight elevation and a firm footing, he springs directly upon his prey, but if upon level ground makes one or two preliminary leaps before striking it. The noise thus made frightens the deer, who makes a sudden and desperate effort to escape. But, if lying down, several seconds are necessary to get under full headway, and the pan- ther follows so rapidly, in a series of successive leaps, that it often succeeds in alighting on the back of its unhappy quarry. Its long claws are planted deep into the quivering flesh, and its sharp teeth make quick work with the ill-fated sufferer. If, however, the deer sees him in season, and can get a good footing for a sudden move, it commonly escapes, and the panther rarely follows it more than a few rods, for as soon as he finds that the deer is gaining on him he at once gives up the chase. In fact, a panther rarely secures more than one out of every four or five deer upon which he attempts to spring. Then, too, it not infre- quently happens that he strikes a deer when it is under such headway that it escapes ; and when panthers were more plenty here than they now are, it was no uncommon thing to shoot a deer bearing deep scars upon its flanks scars that were clearly made by the claws of this powerful 48 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. beast. The female is by far the better hunter and does not lose so many deer as the male." The puma by no means restricts himself to venison, however, and latterly has been able to get very little of it. He eats rabbits, ground- squirrels, and all the small animals that come in his way, including many sorts of birds, like par- tridges, that nest upon the ground. " Cougars are either particularly fond of porcupines," says Mer- riam, " or else are frequently forced by hunger to make a distasteful meal, for certain it is that large numbers of these beasts are destroyed by them. Indeed, it often happens that a panther is killed whose mouth and lips, and sometimes other parts also, fairly bristle with the quills of this formidable rodent." Even mice are not despised. Like other cats it is fond of fish, and can some- times catch -them alive. Though not addicted to bathing, it is by no means afraid of the water. Dr. Suckley tells us that one exhibited for several years in San Francisco, a generation ago, was capt- ured by being noosed from a steamboat, while swimming the Columbia River there, a mile and a half wide. Probably reptiles are not refused at a pinch, as the jaguar is known to eat iguanas, and to be fond of the crocodile, which it seizes and con- quers in its native element. Insects and snails, even, do not come amiss. Carrion, however, seems never to be touched, though hunters agree that an animal lately killed by other hands, will be accepted, II THE FATHER OF GAME 49 for instances are numerous where the panther has carried off not only deer that had been left out over night, but has taken game from before the very eyes of the sportsman. " One day," says Perry, " when shooting rabbits, I tied together a number that I had killed, and hung them on the branch of an alder which overhung the path. Returning along the same path shortly after, I met a cougar trotting leisurely along with my rabbits in his mouth. Having a shell loaded with buckshot, he paid for his dishonesty with his life." The puma was quick to avail itself of the intro- duction of domestic cattle, and began to prey upon the settlers' pastures from the start. It has a par- ticular penchant for horseflesh, and ravages the herds of Indian ponies on the plains and pampas, attacking first the colts, but often killing full-grown horses and mares. This may explain several re- corded incidents of cougars leaping upon the horse of a traveller, but fleeing when they discovered the man in the saddle, even when, as usually happened, he had been dismounted by the plunging of the animal. The cougar probably failed to recognize the human being in that unaccustomed attitude, and was as much surprised as the man. Calves, sheep, and hogs are also preyed upon ; and in the grazing districts of South America and our far West the cougars are yet so numerous, wherever a rough country offers them secure re- treats, as to make a serious drawback in some 50 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. localities to profitable ranching. These forays happen as often by day as by night ; and the de- plorable feature of them is, that the marauder, with true brutish ferocity, is not content with sat- isfying his present hunger, but keeps on slashing right and left until he has struck down every ani- mal within reach. Thus in many cases nineteen or twenty sheep have been slaughtered in a single foray, a little blood only being sucked from each one. The same story comes from the cattle, sheep, horse, and llama owners of South America, where, in the Andes, this animal abounds nearly up to the snow-line. Patagonian shepherds told Mr. Spears of losing from forty to one hundred and twenty sheep in a single night. The manner of attack has been described, a stealthy approach, followed by a lightning-like spring. The attempt, in the case of a large quad- ruped, is to knock it down with one blow of the muscular paw, then instantly to seize and pull back the head, breaking the neck ; Darwin notes in his " Voyage," that he examined the skeletons of many llamas, said to have been killed by pumas, whose necks were dislocated in this manner. If that fails, a single bite of the long, lance-like, sec- torial teeth on each side of the upper jaw, com- pletes the work. The quarry is not eaten on the spot, but is taken away to be devoured at leisure. Small animals are lifted free from the ground, but those as heavy ii THE FATHER OF GAME 51 as a calf or deer are dragged away into the bushes, the accounts in some books of its " flinging its prey over its back," and galloping away with it, being manifest exaggerations. Often he does not devour the flesh at once, or only begins upon it, then drags it away, covers it with leaves and brush, and waits to finish his meal when he is more hungry. When he has gorged himself, he retires a little distance and lies down to sleep. Hunters, knowing this habit, search the neighborhood of a " kill " as soon as they learn of one, sure that the puma is near by, and well aware that he is little to be feared in that state. Few men would be foolhardy enough to poke round in the brush in the hope of arousing a leopard from his after-dinner nap ! There is a widespread notion that the puma always lies in wait for prey upon the limbs of trees, and thence leaps upon its back. It appears that it may do and has done so in special places, as at the salt-licks of Kentucky, and at cer- tain springs in Texas, where deer regularly came to drink, but certainly it is not a general, nor would it be a profitable, habit. Indeed, this animal shows a marked reluctance to climbing, rarely taking to trees except when pursued by a pack of peccaries, coyotes, or dogs, and then only for safety, and not as a point for advantageous attack. It frequently leaps from rocky elevations, however, and to an astonishing distance. Merriam says that on level ground a spring of twenty feet is by no means 52 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. uncommon, and gives an account of one measur- ing sixty feet, where the cat leaped from a ledge twenty feet high and pushed the deer he struck a rod farther by the force of the impact. I have read somewhere of a pair known to have their lair on top of a rock that could be reached only by a vertical jump of twenty feet. Their ordinary gait is a slouching walk or trot, and they are not swift of foot, except for a short succession of leaps. Otherwise, their movements have all that union of grace and quickness charac- teristic of cats. The "blood-curdling screams" of the puma have furnished forth many a fine tale for the camp-fire, but evidence of this screaming, which will bear sober cross-examination, is scant. I myself have heard in the Rocky Mountains at night, shrill screams, so piercing and cat-like, yet of so much force and loudness, that it did not seem likely any- thing less than a cougar could utter them. I be- lieved then, and am still of the opinion, that these were the cries of a puma : but I did not see the animal. Indeed, evidence so positive as this will be difficult to obtain, since loud yells are heard mainly at night, and would be unlikely to be emitted in the presence of a listener at any time. Says Mr. W. A. Perry, who has had a long per- sonal acquaintance with these beasts, and in " The Big Game of North America " has written an ex- cellent account of their habits in the Northwest : ii THE FATHER OF GAME 53 " Sometimes, when the hunter is stalking the deer in the deep recesses of the forest, he is star- tled by a fiendish cry, a cry so unearthly and so weird that even the man of stoutest heart will start in affright ; a cry that can only be likened to a scream of demoniac laughter. This is the cry of the male panther. If it is answered by the female, the response will be similar to the wail of a child in terrible pain." To this may be added the testimony of Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman, one of the sanest and most trust- worthy writers upon life in the Rocky Mountains, quoted from his excellent book " Camps in the Rockies " : " Other strange sounds fall on the ear as I pro- ceed with quickened step toward camp, sounds that you never hear in daytime, when, usually, oppressive stillness reigns in the great upland for- ests. The hoot of the owl is one of the most quaintly weird ; but it is not like the unearthly wail of the puma, or mountain-lion, demoniacal and ghoulish as no other sound in the wide realm of nature. As it re-echoes through the forests you involuntarily shudder, for it is more like a woman's long-drawn and piteous cry of terrible anguish than any other sound you could liken it to. Once heard, it will never be forgotten ; and it can no more be compared to the jabber of the coyote or the howl of the hyena, than a baby's cry of displeasure to its mother's piercing shriek as 54 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. she sees the little one in a position of danger. Out only at night, they are of all beasts the most watchful, and most difficult to shoot ; and, though their fearful call, in very close vicinity, has fre- quently stampeded our horses, and startled some of us from sleep, I have only been near enough to shoot, and kill, one single specimen in all my wan- derings." It does not appear, even here, however, that the writer had any better evidence than his " startled affright " in support of his assertion that the " fiendish cry " came from a cougar. In view of this uncertainty, some men go to the extreme of denying that any puma does or ever did utter such noises as have been described, saying that the story is a composition of fox-howl, screech-owl- hoot, imagination, and plain lying. This seems to me going too far. There is no reason why this animal should not caterwaul at times as well as its humbler relative of the back fence ; and if we may be deceived for a moment, as we sometimes are, by Tom's or Julia's doleful wail, into thinking we hear a child in mortal pain, so we need not scoff unduly at those who hear in the naturally far louder caterwauling of the bigger cat-of-the-moun- tain, the agony of a man or woman under torture. Pumas do not shriek loudly in confinement, but they mew, whimper, and growl, like a house-cat, "only more so." As winter approaches, the mountain lions de- GAME 5 5 scend from their summer haunts in the higher parts of the mountains and increase the number in the valleys, in other words, they follow the game; and it is then that the rancher's herd suffers most, and that in severe weather his corrals are most often invaded. Now and then a particular panther is known to be the author of several suc- cessive outrages, and when he has been killed it is usually found that he is an old fellow whose age and worn teeth have put him behind in the com- petition of the woods, and led him to devote his declining energies to the easier and safer raiding of cattle and sheep. At present the business of breeding horses and donkeys in the mountain valleys of northern Mexico is almost prevented by the prevalence of pumas. When taken early, the kittens become interesting and docile pets, as is frequently seen in South America; but, as a rule, they become too treacher- ous and uncontrollable, with advancing age, to make them safe companions. It is, of the larger cats, the one least frequently seen in the shows of animal- trainers, although common in zoological gardens and travelling menageries, where it breeds freely. The hunting of the puma is hardly classed as a sport in this country. The Gauchos and aboriginal nomads of Patagonia ride it down on horseback, and kill it with their bolas or lances at short range. Our Texan cow-boys occasionally meet one on the prairie, and then have the fun of lassoing and 56 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. dragging it to death, unless they prefer to end its life with their six-shooters. The moment a lasso is round its neck it gives up, and even, it is said, "sheds tears, as if it knew and dreaded its fate." In the Adirondacks, where they have been nearly exterminated to obtain the bounty ($20), they are hunted almost exclusively in winter, on snowshoes, the following of one often lasting several days. On the Pacific Coast, where many are poisoned, most of them are killed at an accidental meeting, a single ball, or even a charge of large shot, being usually sufficient for their quietus. Everywhere dogs are regarded as indispensable to success in regularly hunting them, any sort of a cur will do. Having reason to suspect .the presence of a cougar, the hunter moves about until his dog goes away upon a scent, when he follows as best he can. It will not be long, usually, before the barking will tell him that his cur has discovered the quarry ; and by the time he can overtake it he is pretty sure to find that the animal has taken to a tree, as this cat will almost invariably do as soon as it notices the approach of the dog, which seems to terrify it to a degree comical when we consider the difference in size. Many stories are told of how persons have supposed themselves saved from being torn to pieces by a puma by the courageous behavior of some small dog, that diverted the monster's attention. The jaguar, on the other hand, while hating a dog above all other creatures, n THE FATHER OF GAME 57 is unterrified by it, and will do its best to catch and eat it. One shot usually ends the matter, but should the puma be wounded, but not crippled, it is likely to charge with tremendous force and fury, and become an exceedingly dangerous antagonist. The hide is of no great value, though a favorite material among the Indians of the Southwest for bow and gun cases, perhaps with a half-supersti- tious idea that the skin of so mighty a hunter is peculiarly suited to such a purpose. The flesh (usually boiled) is eaten by all Indians, and is not despised by white men, since it is white and tender, with the taste and appearance, when roasted, of young pig. The fat of the panther is the most satis- fying food of the Argentine desert, supplying the craving felt by the nomads of the Pampas for those nutritive elements elsewhere furnished by vegetable food, there so scarce. Not many myths of the red men have clustered about this animal, despite its great size and strength, a fact perhaps due to the absence in it of attractive mental qualities. The cougar leaves little to the imagination. Clavigero's " History of Lower Cali- fornia " informs us that 150 years ago that prov- ince was so overrun with " lions " that the natives were kept in absolute subjection to the brutes, and were often glad to make a meal from the remains of their prey. This unchecked increase was owing to a superstition which prevented the Indians from killing a puma or even disturbing it WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. II in any way, recalling the veneration felt and re- straint exercised toward the tiger by certain sects in India. Dampier adds, subsequently, that the Jesuit missionaries there were not able for a long time to make any headway against this notion, and could keep no live-stock in consequence. Clans in various tribes of the Southwest have been proudly named after this successful hunter and model guerilla ; and it stands at the head of the curious " prey-god " theogony of the Zufiis, who call it the " Father of Game." ZUNI FETICHES OF THE PUMA. Ill THE SERVICE OF TAILS A TAIL, 1 properly speaking, is a prolongation of the backbone behind (or beyond) the pelvic arch, which supports the hinder limbs. Sometimes this prolongation is the larger half of the entire length of the spinal column, as in some reptiles and a few mammals, the acme being reached by one of the African pangolins (Manis tricuspis\ whose tail is nearly twice as long as its body, and contains forty-nine caudal vertebrae, the largest number known among mam- mals ; sometimes it is extremely short, or altogether abortive, as among frogs and in our own case, for 1 To the light-minded a better title would be A Tale of Tails, or something of that miserable sort perhaps A Caudal Lecture instead of the words at the head of the page. That would be a pun of the most brutal kind, as obvious and headlong as one of the bulls of Bashan. A pun should not come gradually bulging out towards one's intelligence looming up slowly before the mind like a light-house in a fog. It should appear unexpectedly at your elbow, startling, yet not affrighting you, after the manner of the Cheshire Cat. Not on the lookout, you do not at once perceive the allusion, but an instant later the essence of wit encased in the quibble declares itself, as certain candies, disappointing and flavor- less at first, presently disclose a liquid centre of sweets to the surprised palate. 61 62 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. even humanity possesses the rudiment of a tail concealed beneath the skin. The same is true of the more human-like kinds of monkeys (the apes). Some tails, like those of the bear, deer, and goat, are so short, stubbed, and immovable as to defy any attempt to perceive a present purpose in their existence. Of what possible use to a turtle, for example, is its tail ? None, apparently, whatever might have been the case in the differently con- stituted ancestors of the turtle. This part has sim- ply remained after its service in chelonian economy had been long outgrown, as buttons are still sewed upon the sleeves of our coats, although a century has elapsed since men thus fastened back their too voluminous cuffs. It is a survival of the misfit. Indeed, it would not be easy, were one to insist upon visible utility in every case, to prove the serviceability of some of the most pretentious of these appendages. Look at the wild cats. The panther and the ocelot have long and graceful tails ; the lynxes own the merest apology for one, and are irreverently dubbed " bobcats " in the West. Yet you cannot say that the former species thrives better than the latter. Length or brevity of tail seems to have nothing to do with either habits or happiness. Thus the wrens and our various thrashers (Harporhynchi) are cousins-ger- man ; yet the wren's tail is an absurd little tuft of short feathers " weel cockit " over his rump, and in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 63 that of the thrasher is long and drooping. The brilliant sun-birds and gaudy parrots content them- selves with short rectrices, while the no less orna- mented humming-birds and trogons of our tropical woods trail behind them plumes of vivid color, often three times as long as the body. Sometimes the tail carries out the general con- tour of the body, and its origin is scarcely dis- cernible, externally, as among snakes and most fishes ; again, it is an almost naked appendage, as among the rats ; while a third class can be made of tails plentifully furnished, and, as a rule, highly adorned, with hair or feathers, such as those of the horse, the squirrels, the ant-eater, the fox, the malodorous skunk, and the gorgeous peacock, 1 pheasants and birds-of-paradise. But a more interesting line of inquiry is to trace the manifold ways in which wild animals turn their tails to practical account. These appendages are as a fifth limb to a great number of creatures who would be sadly deficient without them. They serve their various owners as shelters ; as garments ; as receptacles, carriers, and tools ; as respirators ; as badges for friend or foe; as weapons, both for offence and defence; as anchors, supports and aids to locomotion on land as well as under the water and through the air ; as musical instruments (for example, by the rattlesnake), or as a means 1 In this bird, however, the resplendent train really consists of tail-coverts and not of the rectrices, or true tail-feathers. 64 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. of expression in a great variety of gestures; as matrimonial advertisements; as egg-holders and incubators ; and finally, as baby carriages, for in all these ways do tails enter into the ministry of limbs to one or another animal. And here it is well to broaden out the word "tail" so as to include more posterior appendages than are included in my first strict definition. Nevertheless, we must draw the line inside of popular usage even here. The prolongations of the wings of certain butterflies, for instance, are not "tails," though entomologists term them so in a special sense; nor would it be allowable to in- clude the spinnerets of spiders, nor the stings of bees, nor the ovipositors of many insects, although these sometimes extend in hair-like tubes beyond the tip of the abdomen, nor the apparently similar breathing-tubes of the Ranatra bugs. But it is right to speak of the "tail" of the scorpion-fly (Panorpa), which is articulated ex- actly like that of a scorpion, of the skip-jack beetle, and of a few other insects ; while the word is fairly applied to certain worms, to all the swimming crabs, the cuttle-fishes, and even to gasteropod mollusks, wherever the body is length- ened out into a more or less serviceable hinder part. Let us take up some of these utilities in their order and illustrate them. What animals, to begin with, employ their tails as a shelter? Well, the great ant-eater does so, for one. The tail of the Ill THE SERVICE OF TAILS ant-eater is an enormous brush, which he is said to bend over his body like an umbrella. His home is in the Amazonian forests, where tremen- dous rains fall ; and as it is his business to be abroad in the forest, pushing his way through the drip- ping undergrowth at all hours, such an umbrella, as Mr. Wallace assures us, is of great service to him, except when it gets him into trouble. This usually hap- pens by reason of an Indian's rat- tling the leaves THE GREAT ANT-EATER. in imitation of a shower, and taking " " advantage of the poor beast's haste to elevate his umbrella, to rush forward and kill it. Hence the wisest of the ant- eaters have concluded that there are times when it is well to know enough not to go in when it rains. The long and ample tail-feathers of East Indian pheasants form a pent-house, with sloping roofs beneath which the chicks huddle, warm and dry 66 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. during showers, a habit especially illustrated in the Himalayan peacock-pheasants (Polyplectron), whose young spend most of their time beneath the shelter and concealment of their mother's fan- like tail, coming out only when called to pick up the food she scratches out of the leaves. Here the tail is a nursery. As for the hermit-crabs, while one could not say they make a shelter of their tails, it is certain that they could not obtain and hold the shell-homes with which they provide themselves, and that are necessary to their existence, were it not for their ability to hold on to them by means of their flexi- ble tails, which grasp the inner whorls, and form an effective lease of the premises. As for garments, who that ever has seen a squirrel humped up on a cold day with its tail pressed close along its back ; or a raccoon, a fox, or a cat, sitting with its feet wrapped in the furry "boa " of its tail, can doubt that this is the putting on of an overcoat ? Only warmly furred animals, by the way, have bushy tails ; and all these sleep curled up, with the tail around the face as birds place their heads beneath their wings. As such animals usually sleep alone, they need more pro- tection against an undue loss of heat while asleep than do animals that take their repose huddled together in groups that warm one another ; hence their blanket-like tails. An attendant benefit of sinking the nose into the brush, as Mr. Law- in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 6/ son Tait has pointed out, is that it answers the purpose of a respirator, warming the air, before it is breathed, to a temperature more suitable for health, and one that will detract less heat from the body than would air entering the lungs wholly untempered. An extension of this overcoat idea into that of a coat of mail is exhibited in certain of the arma- dillos, as the tatusids, where the scaly investiture of the long tail is a part of the protection of the soft under-parts when the animal rolls itself into a ball and defies its enemy's teeth. The same is true of the larger pangolins, whose tail, covered with scales on the outside, and held closely appressed to its rolled-up body, is a very impor- tant part of its self-protection. In that excellent book, William T. Hornaday's " Two Years in the Jungle," you may read a most instructive account of the Indian species of pangolin (Manis pentadac- tyla\ a live example of which was kept by the author for some time, as follows : " My new pet evidently expected fair treatment at our hands, for he soon uncoiled himself and stood up for examination. He was just three feet long, including his tail, which by itself measured seventeen inches, and his weight was eighteen pounds. This tail was a most useful appendage, for it was very broad, measuring five and a half inches across where it joined the body, slightly hollowed underneath and rounded on the top, its 68 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. official purpose being to protect the animal's head. In walking, he carried his back very highly arched in the middle, and ... his heavy tail barely cleared the ground. . . . " If ever a small animal was especially created to resist the attacks of destroyers, that manis must have been the one. In such plate-armor as he wore he could roll himself up and defy the teeth of the jackal, or leopard, or the fangs of the cobra. Having no teeth at all, and claws fashioned only for digging, he would have fared badly in the jungle without his defensive coat of mail. From the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail he was covered with broad, flattened, shield-shaped plates of clear, gray horn. . . . " Not having any one to introduce me, I under- took to get along without that formality ; but it was of no use. He immediately tucked his head down between his fore legs, brought his tail under his body and up over his head, and held it there, forming of himself a flattened ball completely cov- ered with scales. " I said to him, ' My fine fellow, I really must insist upon knowing you more intimately ; so here goes.' " I then undertook to uncoil him, but found I could not accomplish the task alone. I called Henrique to help me, but the tail stuck to the body, as if it had been riveted there. " I also called Canis to help, and while I held Hi THE SERVICE OF TAILS' 69 the body, the other two braced themselves against me and pulled on the tail with all their strength, to uncoil it. We wrestled with it until we were fairly exhausted, failed utterly, and gave up beaten. Such was the wonderful power in the tail of that small animal." As a receptacle and carrier of eggs the tail parts of certain among the lower animals serve an im- portant purpose in their economy. In the lobster, and its miniature, the fresh-water crayfish, the latter segments of the abdomen form a fan-shaped tail, on the under surface of which are small ap- pendages called swimmerets. When the eggs have ripened between the ovaries of the female (whose swimmerets are especially adapted to their purpose, and different from those of the male), they are ex- truded from openings in the second pair of legs, just back of the great front claws. These eggs are covered with a viscid matter, something like those of the frog, which is readily drawn out into threads. These threads become entangled with the hairs covering the swimmerets, and thus sev- eral hundreds of eggs attach themselves to each swimmeret, and appear as large grape-like bunches, filling the whole space beneath the tail. Here they develop under the most favorable conditions, and after the young have hatched, these hold on to the swimmerets, and are carried about and protected by the mother until they are able to care for them- selves. Here is another caudal nursery. 7O WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to speak of one of the most comical uses to which a tail is put that in the opossum family. Here the rat- like, wiry tail is decidedly prehensile a feature to be spoken of later. The opossum uses it con- stantly to grasp the limbs and assist her climbing and holding on. When her young are large enough to go out with her, which is soon after they are born, she endeavors to lead or carry them through the tree-tops, and struggles to climb about the branches, and make use of her prehensile tail as she is accustomed to do; but she often finds that member of no use, for eight or ten squeaking little brats, miniatures of herself, are digging their sharp toes into her fur and clinging with their own tails tightly twisted around hers, which is curved over her back to form a hand-rail for the young crew. If one lets go of this convenient member, it is only to take a convulsive half-hitch around some twig, and thus anchor the whole company, or to choke the poor mother by a twist around her throat or impede her movements by a death-like grasp of one or more of her legs. The same useful mem- ber a fifth hand, as it has often been called enables baby monkeys of the prehensile-tailed South American kinds, to cling to the mothers in their almost aerial flights through the tree- tops. The use of its tail as a tool (distinguished from a weapon) is common enough in the animal king- in THE SERVICE OF TAILS Jl dom, without going into the region of fable for instances, as the old writers used to do when they told how the beaver brought mud and laid it, ma- son-like, with his tail for a trowel. If this member has any part in the beaver's architecture, it is only by the accidental slaps and rubs it may give to the muddy structure as the animal swims around it. The scaly, vertically compressed, knife-like tail of the muskrat would be much better adapted to such a service, but the muskrat puts little or no mud into its house building. What the stout, scaly, spatulate tail of the beaver really does do, is to serve as a powerful sculling oar and rudder in swimming and diving ; and the same is true of the muskrat. One of the most curious features of that curious creature, the king-crab, or horse-foot, of our sea- shores, is the flexibly jointed, bayonet-like spine which forms its tail, and has no ana- logue elsewhere among crustacean, He only acquires it as he ap- proaches adult age, so that it is, as Lockwood expresses it, " a sword of honor," betokening the end of youth. Whether or not this sharp rapier is of value as a weapon nobody seems to know, but it certainly makes a capital alpenstock. The horse-foot is light, and is liable, by the least agita- 72 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. tion of the water, to be turned on its back, when it would be as helpless as a tortoise but for this sharp spike, the point of which it deflects and forces into the sand, thus lifting its hinder parts, and enabling it to roll over upon its feet again. Moreover, were it not for this natural leaping-pole, which is planted firmly in her rear as a brace, the female horse-foot would be unable to push her carapace into the sand, and thus make the burrow which she requires for her eggs. Many of the smaller, bivalved mollusks, or " shell-fish," of sandy ocean-shores are persistent burrowers, and all delve tail foremost. The com- mon soft clam is a good example. Here the pointed, pliable tip of the body, which may be called its tail, is the tool used ; and on page 1 59 of my " Country Cousins," l the way in which the operation is cleverly performed by the pretty little Donax, or wedge-shell, is fully explained. The adroitness with which animals have caught fish with their tails as lures and sometimes as lines, forms the theme of many a barbaric legend and myth. The Norse people say that the bear once had a long tail, but under the advice of the fox, who was jealous of bruin's rivalry in the matter of caudal adornment, he lowered it through a hole in the ice as a fish-line, and held it there 1 Country Cousins. Short Studies in the Natural History of the United States. By Ernest Ingersull. Pages 252. Illustrated. Square 8vo. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1884. Cloth, $2.50. in THE SERVICE OF TAILS J$ until it froze in, and its discomfited 'owner could get away only by breaking it off mighty near its root, as any one can see to this day. This story, paralleled elsewhere in folk-lore, is an amus- ing fancy ; but one might imagine a monkey really able to do something of that kind, if any monkey could be found which cared for fish. An actual instance, however, is afforded by the fish-eating bat of Trinidad (Noctilio leporinus], which finds its tail, and the membranes that con- nect that appendage with the thighs, of eminent service to it. Observers in the Trinidad Field Naturalists' Club report (see their Journal, Vol. I, page 204) that this bat catches its prey (a fish) by throwing it up with the interfemoral membrane. Simultaneously the bat bends its head toward its tail to seize the fish as it is thrown from the water. Probably its long, sharp, curved toe-nails are also of assistance in this queer method of fishing. Similarly, ingenious rats have been known to purloin oil, jelly, and such desirable liquids from bottles too narrow for their entrance, by inserting their tails, and then licking the dripping member, or giving it to a neighbor to lick. Professor George J. Romanes proved beyond question that they did so, by experiments which are detailed in his book, " Animal Intelligence," to which the reader is referred. A like utilization of resources is the strategy of the puma, as observed on the Patagonian pampas, 74 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. where he lies flat down within view of a herd of guanacos that are feeding towards him, and hold- ing up the end of his tail (which is nearly black) lets it tremble there. It is sure to attract the at- tention of the animals, who are certain to approach, led by curiosity, near enough to give the big cat a certain capture of one if not more of their number. The tails of creatures that swim or fly perform a very important service in these methods of loco- motion; while in many cases this is a helpful or even indispensable member in progression upon land. The tremendous leaps of the minute skip- jack beetles, and of the agile sand-fleas, are made by springing from the bent hinder parts of their body, and not by leg-force, as in the cases of the grasshopper and true fleas. Certain fishes, like the file-fish, are accustomed to poise themselves upon their tails, almost motionless, for long peri- ods, when it is well-nigh impossible to distinguish one of them from the ribbons of the eel-grass in the midst of which they dwell ; while the eels and many serpents are able to stand erect upon almost the very tip of the tail, or to hang thereby, and some can even spring off from it, if we may be- lieve the statement of Professor Owen, though I do not know of any snake quite so acrobatic. It is related in the older books of natural history that the kangaroo sits, when reared up, upon his massive tail and strong hind limbs, as upon a tri- pod; and that it is by the elastic force of the tail Ill THE SERVICE OF TAILS that it is enabled to make its long, running leaps, which, in the case of the large wallaby, will aver- age eight or ten yards at each jump. This is now known to be largely an error ; the truth (as shown by its tracks in the mud and by careful observa- tion) is, that the tail only just touches the ground now and then ; yet it is plain that this heavy mem- ber serves a useful purpose in balancing the creat- ure. The same must have been true of those vast reptiles of the Mesozoic days, the dinosaurs, whose THE JERBOA KANGAROO. tracks are impressed so plen- tifully upon the brownstone rocks of the Connecticut valley, and of similar animals, in other parts of the ancient world, known to have had enormous caudal parts a characteristic of primitive forms. One very distinct service the tail of one modern marsupial may perform, is illustrated in the be- havior of the jerboa kangaroo, which collects the 76 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. grass for its nest and takes it home in a bundle or thick wisp, grasped in the curled-up extremity of its strongly prehensile tail. Gould illustrates this in his monograph on the Macropodidae ; and re- marks that, " as may be easily imagined, their ap- pearance, when leaping toward their nests with their tails loaded with grasses, is exceedingly amusing." Referring again, for a moment, to the suggestion that the tail in the large wallabies, and creatures of similar proportions, is useful as a balancing-pole, it may be added that a similar explanation has been offered for the long tails that characterize most of the mice, especially those like the zapus and jerboa that are powerful leapers ; at any rate, the service of a balancing-pole is unquestionably performed by the tails of many climbing and jumping mammals, and by all birds, as can be well seen in the act of alighting. As for the tufts common at the ends-of many of the long-tailed mice, etc., it has been said that that was an extra advantage in the same direc- tion, comparable to the string of knotted papers that boys attach to their kites. Another quaint explanation of the tufted and brush-tipped tails will be noticed farther on. To many tree-haunting animals, such as the opossum, the South American forest monkeys, and some others, the tail has been modified into a most effective instrument for grasping and holding on, even in sleep, by the acquirement of what is called in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 77 prehensibility in its tip, similar to that in the toes of perching-birds, which close tightly around a twig, without any effort on the bird's part, simply as the result of the pressure of its weight. Charles Waterton points out that this faculty is of manifest advantage to the animal, either when sitting in repose on the branch of a tree or during its journey onward through the gloomy recesses of the wilderness. " You may see this monkey," he writes, " catching . hold of the branches with its hands, and at the same time twisting its tail around one of them, as if in want of additional support ; and this prehensile tail is sufficiently strong to hold the animal in its place, even when all its four limbs are detached from the tree, so that it can swing to and fro, and amuse itself, solely through the instrumentality of its prehen- sile tail which, by the way, would be of no man- ner of use to it did accident or misfortune force the monkey to take up a temporary abode upon the ground. For several inches from its extremity, by nature and by constant use, this tail has as- sumed somewhat the appearance of the inside of a man's finger, entirely denuded of hair or fur underneath, but riot so on the upper part." Prehensibility is equally well developed in the naked, rat-like tail of the 'possum of our Northern woods, and to a less extent in the manis; in the Old World, or true, chameleon ; in the tips of the tails of tree-clinging serpents ; and among fishes WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP f - it exists perfectly in the quaint little sea-horse (Hippocampus), which is a poor swimmer, and rests by hooking its tail around a bit of sea- weed or coral, or through a hole in a broken shell, thus an- choring itself securely. A service of the same nature is per- formed by the tail of many birds that are accustomed to climb about the trunks of trees, and cling to upright rocks, etc., in- stead of walking on the ground or perch- ing upon the branches. Familiar examples are the woodpeckers, nut- hatches, creeping- wrens (Certhiadae), and swifts. Whenever these birds rest a moment they press the tail hard against the bark or other surface to which they cling with muscular toes, and lean upon it. Such a leverage is very important to enable the woodpeckers and nut- hatches to deliver their sturdy and repeated blows ; and without such a support the swift could hardly hold itself, as it does for long periods, at rest PREHENSILE TAIL OF THE SEA-HORSE. Ill THE SERVICE OF TAILS 79 against the wall of a hollow tree, rock-crevice, or chimney. As a result, the end of the tail-feathers of such birds has become stiffened and capable of this special work to a remarkable degree ; while in the case of the common chimney swift, and some similar, rock-climbing species of the East, the shafts of the feathers project beyond the vanes in long, sharp spines, equal in effect to the climbing- irons of a telegraph lineman. Among animals that live in the water, the tail becomes of supreme importance in loco- motion. The shrimp's swim- ming is wholly by reaching its tail out and pulling itself back- ward. This, of course, is the principle of the oar ; and the shrimp is able to "feather," since the plates of his tail shut up like a fan in recovering for a new stroke. It is mainly as a screw-propeller, however, that their tails serve the swimmers precisely the mo- tion a man makes when sculling a boat by a single oar held over the stern. This motion is plainly visible in fishes, the most swift and powerful among which have the smallest body-fins ; and it is solely by this sculling movement of the tail that the shark and bluefish make such terrific rushes after prey, that the trout is able to give the angler so much SPINES TERMINATING THE TAIL-QUILLS OF A SWIFT. 80 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. work, and the salmon to climb or leap up water- falls, the ascent of which excites our amazement. Alligators, crocodiles, and aquatic lizards, such as those of India and Egypt, have little other means of progress under water, yet they are powerful swimmers; the Nile monitor, in fact, can swim much faster than young crocodiles of its own size, of which it captures and devours large numbers, by reason of the vertical flattening of its tail. The profound diving of a whale, the follow-my- leader bounding play of the porpoise and dolphin, and the impetus for soaring gained by the flying- fish, are all due to the propulsion of the tail, the principle of which is embodied in the two-bladed propellers of our swift steamships. Even some of the diving-birds make their way under the surface by closing their wings and sculling the short and stiff feathers of the tail, though other diving-birds paddle with their wings under the water just as they fly in the air. In all these flying and swimming creatures, not only birds and fishes, but the marine mammals and the flying quadrupeds, the tail is a rudder, as well as a propeller and balance. This is easily observa- ble not only in the flight of any bird, but in that of the flying and leaping squirrels ; and no doubt it is an essential part of the apparatus for flight pos- sessed by these animals, including the checking and controlling of the speed, as observation of a bird passing or alighting will quickly show ; while in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 8 1 the same observation may prove true of winged insects having hinder appendages or prolonged abdomens, such as dragon-flies. "Short-tailed birds," remarks Frank M. Chapman, "generally fly in a straight course, and cannot make sharp turns, while long-tailed birds can pursue a most erratic course with marvellous ease and grace. The grebes are practically tailless, and their flight is comparatively direct, but the swallow-tailed kite, with a tail a foot or more in length, can dash to right or left at the most abrupt angle." Many a wild creature trusts to its tail for defence in time of danger, and finds in it an offensive as well as a defensive weapon of no mean worth. The "fighting formation" of the American porcupine, for instance, 1 is to turn its back on its foe, hide its head beneath its thorny neck, and strike right and left with its short, spade-shaped tail : this organ is armed with the longest and strongest spines, and it is astonishing what a quick, forcible, and effective blow the little animal can thus deliver. It is probable that the heavy, knobbed tail of the gigantic Mesozoic glyptodon was similarly used. Whales will stave a boat to pieces by a stroke with their powerful flukes ; and the " thresher " shark takes his name from his habit of swinging violently back and forth the long scythe-like prolongation of the upper half of his tail-fin. It is said that he kills small fishes for his 1 See also Chapter VII, page 188. G 82 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. prey by thus thrashing about in a school of them, and that several of these sharks, combining in their attack, will beat a whale to death ; but there is little evidence of the truth of either assertion. THE THRESHER SHARK. As for crocodiles and alligators, although their dreadful jaws are their principal weapon, the blow one of these great saurians can give, when he " swings the scaly horror of his folded tail," is justly to be dreaded by anything it may come into contact with. How serviceable this member may be to the East African crocodile, for instance, appears from the narrative of Dr. J. W. Gregory, the author of "The Great Rift Valley," who re- lates his experience with them on the Tana River as follows : " The animals are surprised when asleep on the bank, and killed with spears ; but the work is rather dangerous, and inexperienced men are fre- quently knocked over by a blow from the reptile's tail, and dragged into the river. ... I was once fishing in the river Ngatana, from a bank about six feet above it, when the chief came and warned me not to sit so near the water, as a crocodile might knock me into it by a blow with his tail. . . . in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 83 Later on, I found that the natives of other Pokomo villages attribute the same power to the crocodile, and the German missionaries at Ngao knew of cases where people had been thus swept into the river and killed. The natives on the Nile told Sir Samuel Baker the same story, and it is hardly likely that it would have been independently in- vented in two such distant localities, and by such different tribes, if it had no basis in fact." Of course if a man, then an antelope, or fish- seeking cat, or any other animal of similar size, could be knocked into the stream and preyed upon ; and that this must often happen is mani- fest from the great numbers of these reptiles which inhabit streams too small to furnish sufficient food in the way of fishes alone. The same habit belongs to the lesser land-lizards, all of which whip severely with their tails when fighting, large ones, like the South American teguexin, being able to keep dogs at a dis- tance by their f e.ar of these blows ; and it is said that in their quarrels most lizards seek first of all to disable the opponent's tail, success in which manoeuvre wins the battle. This seems to be a trifling casualty in the case of many species, such as the geckos, and some American lizards, whose tails break off on the slightest provocation, sometimes, apparently, as a wilful stratagem on the creature's part, of which a good example is found in the behavior of the very common 84 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. ground-lizard of the Southern States (Oligosoma laterale), as described by Mr. H. C. Bumpus and others : "If captured, a by no means easy task, - they make no violent effort to escape, but, with a most droll expression, they eye their captor ; soon winning his confidence, but betraying it at the most unexpected moment, for with a quick strug- gle the tail is dropped off, and, before one has recovered from his surprise, no lizard is to be seen, the tail only remaining, which for some little time twists about with as much vigor as when attached to its owner. " The self-mutilation of the lizard offers a re- markable instance of protection," comments Mr. Bumpus. " It will be seen that the animal, being comparatively slow of foot, cannot ordinarily seek safety in flight, and having no organs of defence, it, on being attacked, breaks off a portion of its tail, which, still alive and twisting about by reflex action, attracts the attention of the enemy, and the lizard, unencumbered and unnoticed, glides into some crevice and is safe. "The muscles of the tail are so arranged that they, by contraction, close over the place of amputation, and bleeding is prevented. From the thus blunted appendage a new rudiment soon appears, which, in a short time, replaces the lost part." Now this is all matter of fact, and true of several Hi THE SERVICE OF TAILS 5 other lizards ; 1 and I have no disposition to deny the practical service it is to the species possessing such brittle tails, on the principle that a man thanks his stars for the fire-escape that enables him to save his life even at the expense of all his property : but some of the darwinizing it has received is beyond my following, at any rate. Mr. Poulton, for in- stance, reasons that the very length of the tail is a protective product of natural selection, it having been so increased for the express purpose of making it easier for an enemy to seize it, and thus more surely fail (by reason of its breaking off) to catch the body of the lizard; we are told that " tails " on the wings of certain butterflies are made conspicuous for a like reason. Then Mr. Poulton goes on to argue further that the long tails charac- teristic of most mice, and especially of the many species which have a racket-shaped or brush-like tuft of hair at the end, are due to the same influ- ence : and, furthermore, that an explanation of the bushy tails of the squirrel, fox, wolf, jackal, etc., is contained in the same protective hypothesis. 1 It is also true of a small snail in the Philippines, whose " tail " (properly the hinder end of its body or foot) will break off if seized : as it is more highly colored than any other part, it is the most con- spicuous point for seizure, but the bird or lizard that takes hold there gets nothing but a wriggling tip for his pains, while the snail drops to the ground and hides. Semper, who expounds this doc- trine at length, says that he lost specimens frequently by trying to pick them up by their tails ; and that ten per cent, of these snails (Helicarion) showed the scar of a previous loss. 86 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Now from appearances alone one might build up a pretty bit of logical fancy-work like this, but habits as well as structure must be considered, use as well as shape. Otherwise we shall make the mistake of the birds who sit on telegraph wires and point out to one another the beneficence of humanity, which has considerately provided them with perches : and how, in beautiful adaptation, the perches are most extensive and numerous precisely in those cleared and cultivated parts of the country where the birds are in greatest number and most in need of such conveniences ! Let us look at the matter from the side of actual habits. In the first place, we notice that many of the long-tailed lizards (and some among them having the most whip-like tails) are not provided with the detachable arrangement, at all, so that in their case the slenderness and length of this ap- pendage must be due to other causes; while, on the other hand, many lizards have very short and stubbed tails, yet seem to thrive as well. Next, of all the natural enemies of the lizard only one kind the snakes might be supposed to creep upon them from the rear, and hence seize the extended tail first ; and these would be obliged to let go later, and take a new hold of their prey, in order to profit by it, a movement which would set the quick lizard free in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. A snake must swallow this or any large animal headforemost, and always endeavors to seize in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 87 it by the head, because the ordinary serpent having once seized a victim never lets go until he has swallowed it. Lastly, there is no observable dif- ference, so far as this point is concerned, between the behavior of those lizards with long brittle tails and those with firm tails or scarcely any tail at all ; and the most brittle one of all, the "glass snake," so called, is a subterranean species that rarely ex- poses either end of its body to capture. As to the mice, they do not ordinarily carry their tails in an extended position, but almost invariably keep them curled about their feet, as if they were afraid something might bite them, instead of anx- ious to induce a possible foe to seize them, in order that they might jerk them out of his clutch and laugh at his discomfiture at finding only a mouth- ful of fur instead of a fat morsel in his teeth. No mouse or squirrel is fool enough for that ; and if by accident, the situation is ever created, no pur- suer is fool enough to sit still and curse his luck while the mutilated mouse or squirrel ambles gaily away. Moreover, there are short-tailed mice. With such bushy-tailed quadrupeds as the wolves, jack- als, and foxes, the case is still worse for the argu- ment. The very last thing such an animal does, when in danger, is to straighten out his tail. His first impulse, on the contrary, is to tuck it as far between his hind legs as he can. The very hard- est part for an enemy to seize would be its bushy tail, and the worst ; for instantly the head would 88 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. fly around, and, finding the attacker engaged, would have an advantage in a fight for life which no wild animal would ever allow another. Who ever heard of a fox saving himself by yielding his brush, as Siberian travellers are said to throw mit- tens, children, and the like, to bears that chase their sledges. The fact is, that about all of a fox which remains uninjured, and is preservable as a trophy, after the huntsman's pack has pulled him down, is his brush, in which the dogs take no interest. If, instead of this wild escapade in evolution the writer quoted had devoted himself to showing that the short tail of most of the deer, antelopes and goats, and of rabbits and burrowing rodents, which are regularly chased by swift-footed canine beasts, was due to the gradual reduction of this append- age through natural selection, because length was a disadvantage in bulk and otherwise, without cor- responding service, he might have made an argu- ment both credible and interesting. These animals are pursued by the carnivora, which, when overtak- ing them, might seize a long tail, as they would have nothing to fear from their jaws. As a matter of fact this often happens to wild cattle, as used to be illustrated on our western plains the fore- most wolf of the pack fastening himself to the buffalo's tail, and dragging back until its compan- ions had reached and seized the nose and flanks of the retarded animal. It might be adduced in til THE SERVICE Of TAILS 9 support of this that the tails of the horse, zebra, and other equines, and such large horse-like ante- lopes as the gnus, had remained long, and often really bushy, because these animals were kickers, and able to prevent with their heels any attempt to bite this long appendage. A natural corollary of this would be the fact that the secretive habits of the mice, which live in holes, are mainly nocturnal, and are attacked by large animals only by being pounced upon or dug out, rendered the length of their tails neither helpful nor harmful to them so far as enemies are concerned ; having probably no more to do with their means of defence than have their large ears nor so much ! Let us, after this digression, return to the main line of our story, and ascertain further how certain of these appendages serve as weapons, and are even armed to that end. In the geological long-ago there lived flying saurians with long tails ; and one of these, de- scribed by Professor Marsh, had spines two feet long on the side of its tail, running outward and backward. A fish more unpleasant to meet than even this long-departed animal is well known along our Eastern coast, as well as in many other parts of the world, under the name of sting-ray, or stinga- ree. The rays (or skates) are flat, triangular-shaped brutes, allied to the sharks in structure ; and they have slender, whiplash-like tails. That of the go WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. stingaree (which sometimes reaches a length of ten feet) bears upon its top, near the root, a long, sharp and barbed spine, with which it is able to inflict deep and danger- ous wounds, when aroused to self-de- fence. Some acrid or poisonous sub- stance seems to en- ter the lacerations thus made, and fish- ARMED TAIL.OF THE STING-RAY. ^^ ^^ ^ the feet or hands by this species, or by the tropical whip-ray, as often happens, find their wounds slow and painful in healing. Something of the same kind, but even worse, is the stabbing apparatus of the surgeon-fish of Florida and the West Indies. " Each side of the tail," says Goode, " is provided with a sharp, lancet-like spine, which, when at rest, is received into a sheath, but it may be thrust out at right angles to the body, and used as a weapon of offence ; sweeping the tail from side to side as they swim, they can inflict very serious wounds, and I have seen in the Bermudas large fishes, con- fined in the same aquarium-tank with them, cov- ered with gashes inflicted in this manner." In the philosophy of animal coloring brought about by natural selection, which has been elabo- rated by Alfred Russell Wallace, Mr. Poulton, and in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 91 others, a prominent part is often assigned to the tail as a badge of identity, especially among mammals and birds. In many species of mammals it is con- spicuously colored above, but is white underneath, in which case it is likely to be carried erect. Deer, goats, and certain antelopes are good ex- amples; and their white cocked-up tails are the most noticeable part of them as they flee away, forming an unmistakable mark to guide their companions whose safety lies in keeping in a close herd. Our common little gray rabbit, or " Molly Cotton-tail," is another good example ; and a still more striking one is afforded by the skunk, as is explained in the chapter on that interesting ani- mal. Such badges are called " recognition colors " ; and their primary purpose if the correctness of the theory be conceded is to bring the sexes together. I have spoken of tails of this conspicu- ous sort as serving the purpose of marriage- advertisements to their wearers. This term applies even more exactly to the adornments of the tail (or tail coverts) of many birds, such as are seen in the resplendent fan of the peacock, the immensely long and exquisitely ocellated trains of the argus and other oriental pheasants, the lustrous expanse of the wild turkey, and in many other large birds, which display these ornaments to their fullest extent, while they pose and strut before the females to attract their preference. But there are many smaller birds in 92 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. which the tail-feathers are greatly prolonged, modi- fied and highly ornamented in the males, appar- ently for the same purpose. Such, for example, are the trogons, and particularly Guatemala's national bird, the quesal, which opens and curls and displays the long emerald plumes that descend from his tail in a most magnificent manner for the benefit of his plainly dressed mate. How curious are the tails of some birds of paradise ! The humming-birds offer similar examples : but here it is the curious shape of a pair or so of prolonged rectrices rather than their color; and one may guess a reason for this when he watches a hummer on the wing, for so exceedingly rapid is the movement of the wings as it poises before a flower, or in front of its demure little mate, that it seems only a jewel flaming in a mist of scintil- lant light. No particular ornament or pattern of color is or could be visible, but above it, raised and steady, are the long tail-feathers, straight, curved, emarginate, thread-like or variously rack- eted, which declare its identity like a badge to the knowing eyes of the other bird. These are stand- ards recognition marks in shape as well as color ; and they signal the language of courtship at the same time, an ornithological flirtation. A reminder of facts like these especially as regards the mammals called forth recently some suggestive remarks from Dr. E. Bonavia, of Eng- land, as follows : in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 93 " As regards the white tip of the tail of certain mammals, there are some curious phenomena connected with tips. . . . White and black are interchangeable. There are many mammals which have black tips to their tails, and this, in allied or other individuals, may change to white. The Arctic hare in its summer dress is brown with black tips to his ears; and the ermine is also brown with half the tip end of the tail black. When these two animals get their snow-white winter clothing the tips of the ears of the one, and the tip of the tail of the other, remain black." These peculiarities of color may be correlated with the fact that the tips of ears, occasionally, and the tips of tails, very frequently, are adorned with tufts of hair, in the case of animals not otherwise long-furred. That is the case with all the hoofed beasts that have long tails, as the horses and asses, cattle, camels, giraffe, and several of the South African antelopes ; the practical service of this as a wisp to drive away biting insects is recognized by every one ; and it results in the ability of such ani- mals to stay on the plains all summer, while their short-tailed relatives are obliged to migrate to moun- tain-tops and other regions of sometimes poorer pasturage in order to escape the flies. This phenomenon of marked color and increased hairiness at " tips " may be further correlated with the fact that in the tip of the tail, particularly, seems to be centred or focalized, an unusual de- 94 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. gree of nervous force, or sensitiveness, or both, which induces an extra supply of nutrition or stimulus at that point to the pigment or hair cells, or both, for it must be noted that terminal tufts of hair are likely to be strongly colored, as, for ex- ample, in the lion, puma, and giraffe. If this is so, it furnishes an explanation of the tufted condition of the tails of so many mice, for which doubtless the animal has a use of its own, very likely as a balancing pole or weight; and so natural selection A JERBOA, SHOWING TUFTED TAIL. has had an intimate structural basis upon which to bring about modifications in each species beneficial to it " after its kind." How much outward evidence there is of extreme nervousness in the tip of the tail not to refer now to the expressive mobility of the whole mem- ber as manifested by dogs will be plain to any one who will watch a collection of cats in a menagerie. Even when they are in repose, the dark end of the tail seems to be involuntarily curling and twisting, like the head of an uneasy in THE SERVICE OF TAILS 95 serpent ; and are they aroused, this agitation be- comes very marked indeed. I do not suppose that the puma which lies in wait for the guanacos, and attracts them by his lifted tail as hunters some- times toll up the pronghorn by lying on their faces and kicking up their heels, thought that strategy out and put it into deliberate execution ; but the waving of the tail was practically involuntary, and he has learned to adapt his hunting to a method whose success we can explain, but which he prob- ably never has fathomed or sought to fathom, for that matter. Serpents give a conspicuous example of this nervous condition of the tail. Every snake, when excited, elevates the tip of it, which is highly sen- sitive to touch, and vibrates it with more or less rapidity. This is most marked in the viperine species, and it is here that we find the horny tips, and the rattles of the rattlesnake, which can be agitated with such extreme rapidity as to make merely a fan of light the eye cannot follow the motion and can be sustained for hours. There is good reason to believe that the presence of the rattle is connected with, if not the result of, this maximum nervousness. How great the importance of this is in the economy of this kind of serpent, and the way in which it is important, I have en- deavored to show elsewhere. 1 The rattling of the 1 " Rattlesnakes in Fact and Fancy," Chapter IX of my book "Country Cousins," published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1884. 96 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP, in quills of the tail of the European porcupine, under circumstances of alarm, is another interesting fact discussed in Chapter VII. But the large part the tail plays in the expres- sion of brute emotions, from furious anger to extravagant joy, is familiar to most persons and need not be dwelt upon here. Mr. Darwin has treated of it extensively in his capital book " The Expression of the Emotions." Foxes, wolves, jackals, et id omne genus > exhibit excitement and alarm by elevating or depressing their brushes, and no doubt wag them in welcome to their friends. The nervous organization and moral sen- sitiveness of dogs have been greatly enhanced by their long association with man, and domestic dogs have many more emotions to express, no doubt, than their wild, or semi-wild, congeners. I have been struck by the lack of affectionate demonstrativeness among the yelping and often savage dogs about an Indian camp. It was rare that any of them were made pets of, and they had never been led to show that, welcome and grati- tude and joy which are so plainly expressed by the flexible tails of the terriers, and poodles, and collies of our houses. IV THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS A PICTURE of the Great Plains is incomplete without a coyote or two hurrying furtively through the distance. The coyote is a wolf, about two- thirds the size of the well-known European species represented in North America by the big gray or timber-wolf. He has a long lean body, legs a trifle short, but sinewy and active ; a head more fox-like than wolfish, for the nose is long and pointed; yellow eyes set in spectacle-frames of black eyelids ; and hanging, tan-trimmed ears that may be erected, giving a well-merited air of alertness to their wearer ; a tail (straight as a pointer's) also fox-like, for it is bushy beyond the ordinary lupine type ; and a shaggy, large-maned, wind-ruffled, dust-gathering coat of dingy white, suffused with tawny brown, or often decidedly brindled. " Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew, Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through, ***** Lop-eared and large-jointed, but. ever, alway, A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray." 99 100 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Such is the coyote : genus loci of the plains : an Ishmaelite of the desert : consort of rattlesnake and vulture : the tyrant of his inferiors : the jackal of the puma: once a hanger-on upon the flanks of the buffalo herds, and now the pest of the cattlemen and sheep herders : the pariah of his own race, and despised by mankind. Withal, he maintains himself, and his tribe in- creases. He outstrips animals fleeter than him- self. He foils those of far greater strength than his own. He excels all rivals in cunning and in- telligence. He furnishes the Indian with a breed of domestic dogs, and makes an interesting exhibit in menageries and trick-shows. The coyote is little known at present east of the bunch-grass plains. In early days, however, he was common enough in the open country of Ar- kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and northward, whence he received the names "prairie-wolf," "red" and "barking" wolf. Threading the passes regardless of altitude, he wanders among all the foothills of the complicated mountain-system that forms the "crest of the continent," and dwells too plentifully in the Californian valleys, thriving upon what he can pilfer from the ranch-yards and corrals, and on the young calves or lambs that he is now and then able to steal from the flock. Hence he there passes his life continually on guard against guns, traps, and poison. In the United States and the Canadian North- iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS IOI west, then, he is a creature of the open country, leaving high mountains and forested regions to the large gray "mountain" or "timber" wolf (Cants lupus). Perhaps this is less his choice than his necessity, for in Mexico and Central America he seeks his food more often in forests than else- where, yet keeps his characteristic cunning and cowardice, becoming there the wild dog of the jungles, as in the north he is the hound of the plains. It is that tropical region, indeed, which gives us his name, for "coyote" comes from the pure Nahuatl word coyotl, the final / softened into an e. This ultimate must not be lost in the pronun- ciation, which is coy-o'te, in three syllables, not ki-yot, as often heard. The word is translated in the old Nahuatl-Spanish dictionaries by the Span- ish adibe, a term applied to the African jackals. It is also employed as a terminal of generic signifi- cation for all similar animals, as Dr. Daniel G. Brinton has explained. Thus tlal-coyotl, from tlalli, earth, and coyotl, is a big burrowing animal found in Mexico. The derivation of coyotl, indeed, appears to be from the root coy-, which means a hole, alluding, of course, to the burrowing habits. I have met, in an indigenous Calif ornian language, a very similar word which is said to mean "hill- dog." When this wolf cannot find a natural hollow in the earth to suit him, nor evict some unhappy hare, prairie-dog, or badger, he digs for himself a 102 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. dry burrow, or prepares a den among loose rocks. The butte districts of the upper Missouri and lower Colorado valleys are therefore his strong- holds. There the decay of sandstone strata, and the breakage due to volcanic eruptions and upheav- als, give him the choice of a large number of cran- nies, while the desolation and remoteness of wide tracts untenanted by men still afford him the seclu- sion he covets. In such seclusion his young family of from five to eight pups is brought forth during the latter part of spring, the date varying with the latitude. It is just before and after the birth of the puppies that the old dog-coyotes work their hardest and the most systematically. In hunting at this time our wolf adds to his ordinary pertinacity and zeal, the sagacity and endurance necessary to turn his victims and drive them back as near as possible to his home, knowing that otherwise his mate and her weaklings will be unable to partake of the feast. A remarkable picture of this was given some years ago in an English magazine (unfortunately I have lost the exact reference) by a traveller who, in one of the best "animal chapters" it has ever been my privilege to read, detailed a chase of this kind as witnessed by him in the grand forests near Lake Nicaragua. The traveller and his Indian hunter-companion had discovered, just before encamping for the iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 103 night, that a band of coyotes was on the hunt in the neighborhood; and were aroused before day- light next morning by the sudden outburst from their clamorous throats. "Their musical cry, reckless and unguarded now, resounded from hill to hill, and echoed in the deep forest. All at once it burst upon the ear, as if some messenger from the front had just arrived. Past the lower ridge, down the forest to our left, swept the pack, each hound seeming to rival the other in noisy glee. Across the wind they gal- loped, and the rising gusts bore to us that cheery music long after they had passed far away through the long glades and green savannahs." It is plain that an Englishman wrote that para- graph. No one but a fox-hunter could take and communicate such enjoyment from a chorus of wolfish notes. Expecting their return, the hunter placed himself at sunrise on a ridge overlooking Lake Nicaragua, and makes us envy him by his description of the scene, "of a grandeur and variety and loveliness," he exclaims, "not to be surpassed in any Eden of the world." " At length," he continues, " I fancied the breeze brought a faint clamor, as of dogs upon the scent. Five minutes more and a tall buck, his coat all staring and wet, his tongue hanging low, bounded across a rocky stream choked with big-leaved plants, which intersected one of the glades within my sight. IO4 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. He vanished in the forest. And now there was no possibility of mistake. The distant cry of the pack came each instant louder to the ear ; at top speed they swept along the trail, heads up high and bushy tails waving. They followed over the stream without a check, and disappeared under the arches of the wood. Presently I heard the crash- ing of undergrowth and threw myself flat upon the ground. Laboring terribly, the buck broke cover at the foot of the ridge, and ran along the forest on my left. The coyotes' triumphant cry rang louder and louder, and then they, too, appeared, running as fresh as at the beginning of the chase. They dashed along in a compact mass, eight or ten couple of grown dogs, and toiling after were three or four heavy bitches, and a dozen sturdy pups of all ages : these had plainly joined the chase only a few moments before, for they were playing and biting one another. " I rose to my feet and watched with the greatest interest, for it seemed certain that the buck must have over-run the coyotes' trail and his own scent. My guess was correct. On the edge of the forest, a big old dog which had led the pack, raised his muzzle and howled. Each hound stood still, and then I could mark that some of the finest animals were much more blown than the others, thus show- ing that the game had been turned by a forced gallop. The leader sniffed about for a moment, then uttered a sharp whine, on which the pack IV THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 105 opened like a fan, while the whelps sank far into the rear. Scarcely had the last dog vanished in the undergrowth, nose and tail to earth, when a short challenge rang out. There was a moment's pause, while the old dogs verified the fact, I sup- pose. A bolder cry proclaimed that all was well, and the pups, which had been standing still as statues in their place, dashed off into the wood. Then the music of the pack broke out again ; they swept away under the mysterious trees and I saw them no more. " Certainly," exclaimed the narrator, at the con- clusion of this brilliant and instructive story, " no training could have bettered that day's run. To drive a grown buck back to his starting-place ; to send on a portion of the pack to that point where he would strive to break cover ; to head him again and again into the covert, where his speed could not be exerted to the full, were facts which might puzzle all the best dogs in England, and the human intelligence which directs them." His game and its getting are not always so noble as this, however, and the coyote knows well the pinch of famine, especially in winter. It has been remarked that the main object of his life seems to be the satisfying of a hunger which is always craving; and to this aim all his cunning, impu- dence, and audacity are mainly directed. Noth- ing comes amiss. Though by no means the swiftest-footed quadruped upon the plains, he runs 106 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. down the deer, pronghorn, and others, tiring them out by trickery and overcoming them by numbers. The buffalo formerly afforded him an unfailing supply in the way of carrion and fragments left by his Brahmins, the timber-wolves, who stead- ily followed the herds and seized upon decrepit or aged stragglers, and upon any calves that they were able to "cut out" and pull down. In such piracy the coyotes themselves engaged whenever they saw an opportunity, although it tried their highest powers ; and success, when attained, fol- lowed a system of tireless and sanguinary worry- ing. The poor bison or elk upon which they concentrated might trample and gore half the pack, but the rest would stay by him and finally nag him to exhaustion and death. I remember once reading an account of the strat- egy by which a large stag was forced to succumb to a pack that had driven it upon the ice of a frozen lake, as they had deliberately planned to do. Part of the wolves then formed a circle about the pond, within which the slipping and exhausted deer was chased round and round by patrols, fre- quently relieved, until, fainting with fatigue and loss of blood, the noble animal fell, to be torn to pieces in an instant. Far less worthy game attracts him, however. In California and New Mexico he has become so destructive to the sheep that incessant war is waged upon him by the ranchmen. In Kansas iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 107 and Nebraska he is accused of making havoc among the domestic poultry, but it is quite likely he gets the discredit of many depredations by foxes, weasels, and skunks. Similar misdeeds were justly charged against him by the farmers of Illinois and Wisconsin, when, fifty years ago, the prairies of those States were the frontier. Two or three times a year, therefore, a general holiday would be declared, and a wolf-hunt organ- ized, in which volunteers from all the surrounding settlements would gather, form a circle miles in diameter around the spot to which the game was to be driven, and then, systematically marching forward, would concentrate until they had cor- ralled the animals into a small district. Such battues would result in the destruction of great numbers not only of prairie-wolves, but also of lynxes, polecats, and other "vermin," and free the neighborhood of these pests for that season at least, besides being the occasion of a social merrymaking rare enough to be keenly enjoyed among the frontiersmen. Tactics similar to those in coursing a stag upon the ice, as already mentioned, are pursued by the coyote when he sets his heart upon a hare. Alone, he could neither overtake nor surprise it. Two wolves assist one another, therefore, one giving instant chase while the other squats upon his haunches and watches the operation. The runner turns the hare in a circle that presently brings it 108 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. back near to the point of starting, where the sec- ond wolf is ready to keep puss going while the first rests. Then the wolf in chase bowls the hare over, and seeks to appropriate the whole of his not over-big carcass before the resting partner can come up and claim his share, whereupon a row is very likely to ensue. To capture the sage-hen, grouse, or quail, the coyote roughly quarters the ground, somewhat like a trained dog, but with frequent crouching pauses, all the time wending his way toward the quarry. At the right moment he will drop flat in the grass and creep stealthily forward, as a cat would do, until near enough to make a fatal spring. The birds do not seem to lie to him as they will to a setter or pointer, but get up and fly the instant they discover his presence. In fact, nothing edible escapes this omnivorous prowler. It is the arch-enemy of such small deer as prairie-dogs and gophers ; and one reason why the rabbits have become such a pest in central California is that this wolf has been mercilessly killed off there. If no better food offers, it will revel in carrion of any sort. " It resorts in great numbers to the vicinity of settlements where offal is sure to be found, and surrounds the hunter's camp at night. It is well known to follow for days in the trail of a traveller's party, and each morning, just after camp is broken, it rushes in to claim whatever IV THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 1 09 eatable refuse may have been left behind. But it cannot always find a sufficiency of animal food. Particularly in the fall, it feeds extensively on 'tunas,' which are the juicy, soft, scarlet fruit of various species of prickly pear (ppuntia)\ and in the winter upon berries of various sorts, particu- larly those of the juniper." Under the pangs of excessive hunger these small wolves are compelled to a furtive boldness of which they are incapable under ordinary cir- cumstances. Thus I have known them to come repeatedly within pistol-range of my camp-fire in southern Colorado, and hunters tell me that they have been known to pull, or try to pull, the boots or the leather straps of a saddle, from under the head of a slumbering camper. Sitgreaves records that when, for two days and nights, his party had kept possession of some solitary springs in an arid part of Arizona, the coyotes became so desperate from thirst that they would come to drink while men and mules were at the spring. In the account of their habits in Nicaragua, to which I have already referred, is included the opinion of the Indian who was accompanying the writer, and who evidently held this wolf in higher respect than do those of us who know the animal only on the plains. " You see [says Manuelo] they are not like other beasts, afraid of fire. . . . They cluster round it at night, and the larger your fire, the more coyotes. 1 10 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Ay ! there's cause for fear when one is alone and the pack is out. They're worse then than tigers or the cowardly pumas, though there are few who believe it. They come sneaking up through the black glades, noiseless and silent, and they squat on their haunches and their eyes shine like stars. They wait and watch and will not be driven off. You shoot one, but others come. They sit like ghosts like pale devils round your fire. Ah ! I tell you, senor, it is terrible to be beset by coyotes ! " Hour by hour they sit there, just out of reach, in a circle around you. It is a nightmare ! From very weariness you doze off, and, waking with a horrid start, you shout to see how near the devils have crept. As you spring up, they slink back again, and take the former ring, licking their foxy jaws, but making no sound. And you you rush at them ; and they glide away and vanish on the instant in the black undergrowth. But, as you return, they come forth again, they sit down, and stare with never a wink in their green eyes. It is terrible, senor!" As a rule, on our western plains, they are cow- ardly to the last degree, and trust to superior num- bers and well-laid plans to effect their object. I remember at a place where I once encamped for two or three days in southwestern Wyoming, the rough ledge of a butte-face, just across the creek, was the home of a family of these wolves, and I often saw them, the mother lying at the mouth iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS ill of her den, and the four whelps romping in the sunshine. The father of this family kept out of sight, but the second day I caught sight of him in pursuit of a doe antelope and her fawn. The doe was backing away on the plain, keep- ing the little one, who seemed to understand its part perfectly, close to her hind legs. Following her closely was the wolf, frequently making a dash to the right or left, to get at the fawn, but each time the brave little mother, whirling alertly, would present to him her lowered head, and make a dash at his skull with her sharp fore hoofs. Thus she retreated ; but I fear that the pursuer's longer breath and varied tactics won the day at last. It is said that this wolf can even kill the rattlesnake, by sheer quickness of onslaught. A prime characteristic of the coyote is his aston- ishing voice, which differs so much from the well- known wolfish howl of other members of his race as to have suggested the specific name Cams latrans, or barking wolf. It begins with a series of sharp yelps which quickly run into a prolonged howl that may strike you as dismal or simply in- teresting hardly alarming as you happen to feel. Often these yelps and howls are repeated with such rapidity and ventriloquistic force, as to seem to fill the whole horizon, and the unsophisti- cated traveller will be certain a large pack is near him, when in fact the whole clamor is raised by one, or at most two, lean and hungry barkers. 112 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. Remembering these astonishing vocal perform- ances, it is amusing to read the story told by the Kaibabits Indians, of northern Arizona, to account for the diversity of languages, for what animal could better figure in such a history ? The old men of the Kaibabits say, the grand- mother goddess of all brought up out of the sea a sack, which she gave to the Cin-au'-av brothers, great wolf-gods. This sack contained the whole of mankind, and the brothers were bidden to carry it from the shores of the sea to the Kaibab Plateau, and by no means to open the package on the way lest, as with Pandora's box, untold evils should be turned loose. But, overcome by curiosity, the younger Cin-au'-av untied the sack's mouth, when the majority of people swarmed out. The elder Cin-au'-av hastened to close it again and carry it to the Kaibab Plateau, where those who had re- mained in the bag found a beautiful home. Those who had escaped were scattered, and became Navahos, Mokis, Dakotas, white men, and all the rest of the outside world -poor sorry fragments of humanity without the original language of the gods ; and it was all the fault of that careless coy- ote, Cin-au'-av. The quick wits and inquiring mind of the prairie- wolf serve him not only in chasing, but in saving himself from being chased. A new enemy has lately arisen, however, that puts him on his mettle. This is the practice of chasing him with hounds iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 113 after the manner of fox-hunting which is largely pursued now as a sport at army posts in the West, and here and there by townspeople and ranchmen. It began, I think, and has been most diligently developed among the colonists in the interior of British Columbia, where a pack of hounds, re- cruited largely from the famous Badminton Ken- nels, in England, has long been maintained at Ashcroft, in the Fraser valley. The hounds take to this new sport readily, yet the wily and swift-footed wolf is often able to keep out of their way, and save his brush in some rocky retreat, after leading the horsemen a run which sets every nerve a tingling. Next to the wolverine, the prairie-wolf is, per- haps, the wariest of the animals not excepting the fox against which the trapper pits himself. To poisoned meat he falls a victim through his gluttony, and in this way the ranchmen destroy great numbers annually ; but he is rarely trapped. The old writer Say tells, with a touch of glee, how his friend Titian Peale, who was a naturalist as well as a painter, was baffled in trying to catch a live coyote for his father's famous Museum one of the sights of old Philadelphia. Peale's first experiment was with a " figure-four," and came to nought because a wolf burrowed under the floor and pulled the bait down between the planks. " This procedure," sagely remarks Mr. Say, "would seem to be the result of a faculty i 114 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. beyond mere instinct." A cage was next con- structed, into which the wolves might enter, but out of which they could not depart. The coyotes came, admired the arrangement, sang doleful lamentations over the bait, which they could see and smell but could not taste, and went away again. Disappointed here, Mr. Peale next began a series of experiments with steel traps, one of which, pro- fusely baited, was concealed among the leaves. Plenty of tracks alone rewarded this effort. "You can't live on tracks " is one of the aphorisms of the Plains. Then a seductive bait was suspended above the trap in the midst of several other pieces; but the expected victims, stepping circumspectly, carried off all the meat except the one piece it was intended they should take. Baits were next hung up as before, the trap was buried in leaves and these were burned, so that the trap, scorched free from any odor of human hands, lay covered with ashes; still the one bait over the steel jaws was avoided, and no sinewy foot was pinched. Finally a wicked arrangement of innocent-looking logs set on a trigger was made to fall upon the wolf and destroy him. Peale got his " specimen," but it was only by brute force : the coyote had been a match for him in brains. The remarkable craftiness of this animal, to- .gether with its secretive disposition, nocturnal prowling, and power of annoyance, have caused iv THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 115 the coyote to figure prominently in the myths and religious histories of nearly all the native races of the far west, especially southward ; and a collection of these stories from the writings of Powell, Powers, Bandelier, Gushing, Curtin and others would sug- gest to every reader the Reynard of European folk- lore, not to speak of other interesting parallels. The skins of these wolves are not as highly valued as those of the bigger gray wolf, yet formerly they entered largely into the shipments of the Hudson's Bay Company, for whom they were "cased," or stripped off inside out, as is done with smaller fur-bearers, such as the beaver and ermine. At present they are in demand to some extent for making sleigh-robes, rugs, and so forth, and to a less degree for mantles and boas, but can scarcely be accounted among the com- mercial furs. The striking resemblance between the coyote and the majority of the snappish curs thronging in the camps of the redskins long ago attracted attention, and with good reason, for these dogs are descended from tamed wolves and foxes of one kind or another, and the stock was, and is yet, constantly replenished by their masters through mixture with the wild wolves. As a pet the coyote is not in great favor. He will, indeed, stay at home, and will consent to friendly, and even affectionate, terms with his owner, but he seems to have not a particle of Il6 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP, iv gratitude, nor any of that responsive attachment that makes the well-bred dog so lovable as a friend. Moreover, in spite of his natural subtlety and shrewdness, he shows little aptitude for learning the ordinary accomplishments of dogs, and so fails to sustain an interest in him after the novelty of first acquaintance passes off. Perhaps this seeming inaptitude is really unwillingness, since he may easily regard the things sought to be taught him as beneath his serious attention. If so, the fact that he is occasionally seen as one of the showman's performing animals is all the more noticeable ; since unquestionably he could say to the audience, " I could show you a trick worth two o' that." It is a fact, however, that his habits are chang- ing in many particulars with the change in his environment that has been so rapidly brought about in the West; and it will be interesting to observe how far, and in what direction this pro- ceeds in the future. US V THE BADGER AND HIS KIN MANY an animal lives beside us, of which we are told by those genial vagabonds, the hunters, or whose traces constantly present themselves, but of which we rarely catch even a glimpse. These creatures continue to pursue their own secluded manner of living, while men increase around them, and civilization alters their environ- ment, accommodating themselves as well as they can to human interference with their habits and subsistence, and surviving or even profiting by the changes, but keeping aloof from the eyes of men. I have been using the word " animals " here in its special popular sense of designating the four- footed, hairy creatures technically termed Mam- mals ; and it is a curious and notable lack in our English speech that we have no vernacular word which exactly stands for this most definite and familiar of zoological groups : " quadruped " won't do, where precision is desirable, since many rep- tiles, as lizards and turtles, have four feet ; and I see no help for it but to popularize the word "mammal," which is not a very "hard" one to learn. 119 120 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. The birds, or at any rate many of them, seem to welcome the coming of mankind, and to make friends with him at once, and occasionally to fol- low him into wider countries. Thus the swift, the barn-swallow, and the eave-swallow have aban- doned in the east their habits of nesting in hol- low trees and upon rocky cliffs or clay-banks, and now make their homes altogether in the chimneys of houses and under the eaves and roofs of barns and outhouses. The phoebe-bird so generally chooses the exposed timbers of bridges that it is more widely known as the bridge-pewee than by any other name ; yet it as often places its adobe cabin on the beam of a shed or porch, as if seek- ing human company. The grouse, quail, crow, and some other birds have moved westward with the advancing migration of agriculture; and every- where, no doubt, the total of singing-birds has been greatly increased by the civilizing of the land. Thus we make daily observation of most of the birds, and only need to attend to them more minutely to become aware of the presence of those kinds more rare or occasional. With the mammals the case is different. Almost the only kinds, not voluntarily domesticated, that have attached themselves to mankind, are the rats and mice cosmopolitan pests, presumably of Asiatic origin, which have now spread all over the world. Many beasts, as the big game and fiercer carnivores, have almost or quite disappeared v THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 121 from the more completely civilized regions, for one reason or another ; while others, as the hares and squirrels, because of their prolificacy and com- parative worthlessness, can maintain themselves everywhere, despite their conspicuous manner of life. The muskrat is a singular example of this faculty, and it has probably augmented rather than diminished in numbers in the United States since the civilization of the land, in the face of steady persecution on account of its value on the one hand, and, on the other, because it is harmful to certain human enterprises. But besides these classes there is a group of mammals, fellow-denizens with us of the cultivated parts of the country, that persist, and in some cases increase, yet escape the notice of all but a few persons, and continue to live their own lives regardless of us and our operations. What do the most of us see or know, for ex- ample, of the wild mice, half a dozen species of which are numerous everywhere in our woods and fields ? Yet thousands of these small and active creatures, the lovely red and white deer or vesper mouse (Hesperomys), the various short- tailed brown meadow-mice (Arvicolae), the far- leaping, kangaroo-like jumping-mouse (Zapus), and several others allied to them, inhabit all our forests, prairies, fields, and gardens. They are beyond counting, and form the principal game of a large number of wild animals, mammals, 122 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. birds, and reptiles, without whose assistance we should be unable to endure their hordes, while the results of their pernicious activity are con- stantly apparent. Read this extract from Kenni- cott's masterly but nearly forgotten papers on the mammals of Illinois, and note how important a factor in the relations of men and animals are these unseen foes : he is speaking more particu- larly of the true meadow-mice of the genus Arvi- co/a, but we may take his statements as good for the whole class. "The food and general habits of the different species are much alike, though some prefer high, and others wet ground ; while others inhabit the woods, prairies, etc. All the species burrow, and none climb trees. The common food of those I have observed is the grasses and other herbaceous plants, their seeds and roots, and the seeds and acorns, as well as the bark, of trees in the woods, with grain and vegetables, when inhabiting culti- vated fields. Some are omnivorous, as has been observed in their habits while in captivity. To what extent they eat animal food when at liberty, I am unable to say, though it is probable that they consume some insects in summer ; and they may even obtain a few, with the pupae and eggs of more, concealed in the grass traversed by them in winter. Some kinds, at least, lay up stores of food for winter. All are active at this time, mov- ing about in the coldest weather, and never hiber- nate like marmots. "One characteristic, certainly possessed by all the species in common, is their ability to destroy V THE BADGER AND #IS KIN 12$ the products of the farm. I know of no mam- mals more injurious to the farmers in northern Illinois than these seemingly insignificant meadow- mice. Few, if any, escape their depredations, though the full amount of damage done by them is but little known ; and yet they are usually thought unworthy of consideration. Such of our farmers as cut their corn and leave it standing for some time in the field, as is usually done here, will find, upon examination, that in many, if not every one, of the shocks there may be found one or more pair of meadow-mice, which have dug for themselves burrows in the ground beneath, and have carried thither a store of corn ; while in these, or ensconced in the protecting corn- stalks above, they have built themselves a nest, in which they can lead a very comfortable sort of life, regaling themselves, when hungry, upon the corn. Now a pair of mice will not, it is true, eat enough corn to alarm a farmer for the safety of his crop ; but let any one examine a large field of corn, thus cut and left standing on the ground a month or two, where these mice abound, and carefully estimate the amount of corn de- stroyed in each shock, observing that which has been buried in the burrow, and then multiply that by the number of shocks inhabited by these pests, and it will often be found that they have really consumed or destroyed a large amount. In meadows they do much injury by devouring the roots and stems of Timothy, clover, and other plants used for hay. This mischief, however, is seldom noticed by farmers ; or, if it is at all, in districts where moles abound, all the blame is laid upon them, as, indeed, is very much of the 124 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP, v damage done by meadow-mice wherever the two exist together. They also do great mischief by killing young plants in grain-fields; and, soon after the seed is sown, they destroy many of the grains, little stores of which may be found col- lected in shallow excavations. These are often not eaten, and, germinating, astonish and scandal- ize the farmer by the appearance of a thick clump of plants where he thought he had sown his seed quite uniformly. They also dig up grain that has just sprouted ; and, by examining fields of young wheat, oats, etc., spots will be seen where they have dug down, guided by the growing blades, and taken off the grain. In a nursery, where apple-seeds were planted in autumn, I have ob- served that, during fall and spring, so many of the seeds were dug up by these mice as to leave long gaps in the rows of seedlings, the empty shells of the seeds being found lying about the rows from which they had been taken. They congregate in stacks of grain and hay, some- times in exceedingly great numbers, destroying all the lower parts by cutting galleries through them in every direction. "The greatest mischief done by meadow-mice is the gnawing of bark from fruit-trees. The complaints are constant and grievous throughout the Northern States of the destruction of orchard and nursery trees by the various species of arvi- colae. The entire damage done by them in this way may be estimated, perhaps, at millions of dollars. . . . This is especially the case at the West, where no care is taken to protect the trees against them, careless orchardists allowing grass to grow about the roots of their fruit-trees, and Sorex coopeii CHAP.V THE BADGER AND HIS KIN I2/ thus kindly furnishing the arvicolae with excellent nesting-places in winter, and rendering the trees doubly liable to be girdled. In the nurseries in northern Illinois, I have seen whole rows of young apple-trees stripped of their bark for a foot or two above the ground. Thousands of fruit-trees, as well as evergreens and other orna- mental trees and shrubs, are at times thus killed in a nursery in one winter. . . . Many times in spring, when a florist uncovers some choice plant he has carefully protected during the winter by straw, etc., he is grieved and chagrined to find, instead of a fine Dianthus, or half-hardy rose, two nimble, black-eyed arvicolae, which have found good winter quarters in the shelter pro- vided for the plant that has furnished them food. No little injury do they to vegetables of all kinds, destroying the young plants of peas, beans, cab- bages, etc., as well as digging up seeds of all sorts, and gnawing potatoes, beets, and other roots." How often do we see these creatures, so numer- ous and ubiquitous ? How unexpected would be an accidental discovery of their presence, were it not for their too familiar assaults upon our grain- fields, granaries, and gardens? And how clever they are in their mischief ! Then there are the shrews. 1 Two or three kinds of these tiniest of quadrupeds, looking like miniature mice, until you examine them, note 1 See Plate of Shrews, opposite: Blarina brevicauda, com- mon short-tailed shrew of the eastern United States. Sorex cooperi, an eastern long- tailed shrew; the smallest of known mammals. Sorex vagrans, a common Western long-tailed shrew. Urotrichns gibbsi, the curious shrew-mole of the Pacific coast, 128 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP, v the prolonged flexible snout and delicate rows of needle-pointed teeth, made to seize, hold, and crush the hard, slippery bodies of insects, inhabit by thousands every part of the country, and are active at all seasons of the year ; yet only now and then is one seen, and that one is usually dead. Mainly nocturnal in their work, and sneaking from point to point under leaves and through runways concealed by the arching grasses, they elude our notice while existing in multitudes about our feet. Of the moles we seem to know somewhat more, for the heaved-up lines of turf that mark their sub- terranean lines of research for bugs and worms, and the hillocks of loose earth, showing where, at intervals, they have cast out the excavated soil, are familiar to all dwellers outside of large cities. Nevertheless, so infrequently is the miner himself met with, that many a person who has grumbled all his life at the depredations on his lawn, would not recognize the culprit when brought before him, and certainly could not tell whether it were the common garden-mole, or the star-nosed one, or Brewer's hairy-tailed mole. 1 These animals, it 1 See Plate of Common Moles, opposite : I. The eastern Garden- Mole (Scalops aquaticus) ; a, head, side view; , palm of fore-foot; c, semi-naked tail. 2. The Star-nosed Mole (Condylura cristata}\ a, head, under side; 6, palm; t, tail; rus) , 275. Raccoon-hunting, 290. Rats, trained, 183 ; use of tail by, 73- Rattlesnake, rattling of, 95. Recognition colors, 90, 147, 236. Sand-badger (Arctonyx collaris), 137, 248. Sea-horses (Hippocampus), 78. Shrews, American. 127. SKUNK, THE, CALMLY CONSID- ERED, 209-248 ; the North American (Mephitis mephitica), INDEX 301 209-248 ; little striped (Spilogale) , 247; means of defence, 234; remedies supplied by, 244 ; white- backed (Conefafus mapurito), 248. Snail (Helicarion), with fragile tail, 85. Snakes, education of, 159 ; nervous tail of, 95. SQUIRRELS, OUR GRAY, 1-30; and bluejays, 20 ; black, 29 ; fox (Sciurus niger) , 28 ; flying (Sciu- ropterus volucelld) , 23 ; gray (Sci- urus carolinensis} , 1-30 ; gray, migration of, 16 ; ground, 28 ; melanism and albinism in, 29; red (Sciurus hudsonius), 26, 30. Sting-ray (Dasybatis centrums}, 89. Stinking badger. See Teledu. Surgeon-fish (Acant/iurus xan- thoptetus) , 90. Swifts, spiny tails of, 78, 79. TAILS, THE SERVICE OF, 61-96; as objects of attack, 85, 88 ; pecul- iarity of tips of, 93 ; prehensile, 70, 77 ; tufted, discussed, 76, 85, 91, 94 ; used in swimming, 79. Tejon (Tax idea berlandiert) , 138. Teledu (Mydaus meliceps), 137, 248. Thresher-shark ( Alopias vulpes) , 82. Tree-porcupines (Synetheres) , 195. Tricks taught to animals unwisely, 182. Wallabies. See Kangaroo. Wolf, barking or red. See Coyote. Wolf, gray (Canis lupus], 101 ; prairie (coyote), 99; mountain or timber, 101. Wolves, educated, 182. Woodchuck, the (Arctomys monax), 251-271 ; superstitions as to the, 269. WOODLAND CODGER, A, 188-206. Woodpeckers, tail-supports of, 78. Zebra, education of, 178. BIRDCRAFT. A FIELD-BOOK OF TWO HUNDRED SONG, GAME. AND WATER BIRDS. By MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT. With Full-page Plates, containing 128 Birds in their Natural Colors, and Other Illustrations. Small quarto. Cloth. $3.00. PRESS COMMENTS. " This is a charming volume, upon a pleasant theme. The author is not a hard- hearted scientist who goes forth with bag and gun to take life and rob nests, but a patient and intelligent observer, who loves the children of the air, and joins their fra- ternity. Such a book inspires study and observation, and encourages effort to acquire knowledge of the works of God. The book is a wise teacher as well as an inspiring guide, and contains beautiful, well-arranged illustrations." New York Observer. " The author has struck the golden mean in her treatment of the different birds, saying neither too much nor too little, but mostly furnishing information at first hand, or from approved authorities. The book will be very welcome to a large number who have felt the want of a work of this kind. It will increase their enjoyment of outward nature, and greatly add to the pleasure of a summer vacation." Boston Herald. THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE. A NE W ENGLAND CHRONICLE OF BIRDS AND FLOWERS. By MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT. i8mo. Cloth. Gilt Top, 75 cts. ; Large Paper, $3.00. Filled with the very spirit of New England woods and byways, it is a book to make glad the heart of every lover of nature; for, together with a keenness of insight, and a scientific precision, it unites the warmest sympathy and reverence of all the doings of that mysterious world of birds and flowers of which we really know so little and of which no study can be more engrossing. Mrs. Wright is well known as a photographer of unusual skill, and the large paper edition of her charming little book is illustrated by reproductions of her own pictures of the scenes she puts before us so vividly. " A dainty little volume, exhaling the perfume and radiating the hues of both culti- vated and wild flowers, echoing the songs of birds, and illustrated with exquisite pen pictures of bits of garden, field, and woodland scenery. The author is an intimate of nature. She relishes its beauties with the keenest delight, and describes them with a musical flow of language that carries us along from a ' May day ' to a ' winter mood ' in a thoroughly sustained effort; and as we drift with the current of her fancy and her tribute to nature, we gather much that is informatory. for she has made a close study of the habits of birds and the legendry of flowers." Richmond Dispatch. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. TOMMY-ANNE AND THE THREE HEARTS. BY MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT, Author of "Birdcraft" "The Friendship of Nature" etc. WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALBERT D. BLASHFIELD. 1 2 mo. Cloth. Colored Edges. $1.50. This book was planned as a partial answer to the torrent of questions asked by a group of children living a wholesome out-door life children who feel a kinship with living things, and have an inborn belief that there is something more in a flower, bird, or little wood beast than its market value ; children who are not satisfied with answers that give them the bare facts of nature with all the humanity squeezed out, but who on the other hand cannot be silenced with the pretty but impossible fables with which it was once considered proper to degrade the intelligence of youth. " The ways of all wild living creatures have a fascinating interest for most children, but unfortunately their parents and friends are usually too ignorant to answer their reasonable questions. To such inquiring minds this book should be a boon. They will hear the unappreciated garden Snake's plea for toleration, and Mole's account of his own good deeds. They will have a peep into Bob-o- link's wardrobe and a glimpse of Madam Duck's nursery, and will learn many surprising things about our small familiar beasts, and the common plants which we all think we know. A pleasant thread of story binds together the bits of information, making them easier to hold, and the child who reads will be charmed while he is instructed, and led on to make new discoveries himself." The Nation. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE* NEW YORK. BOOKS ON NATURE. BADENOCH (L. N.). The Romance of the Insect World. By L. N. BADENOCH. With Illustrations by MARGARET J. D. BADENOCH and Others. Second Edition. Gilt top. $1.25. "The volume is fascinating from beginning to end, and there are many hints to be found in the wisdom and thrift shown by the smallest animal creatures." Boston Times. " A splendid book to be put in the hands of any youth who may need an incentive to interest in out-door life or the history of things around him." Chicago Tim *s. BRIGHTWEN. Inmates of My House and Garden. By Mrs. BRIGHT- WEN. Illustrated. I2mo. $1.25. " One of the most charming books of the season, both as to form and sub- stance." The Outlook. " The book fills a delightful place not occupied by any other book that we have ever seen." Boston Home Journal. GAYE. The World's Great Farm. Some Account of Nature's Crops and how they are Grown. By SELINA GAVE. With a Preface by G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., and numerous Illustrations. I2mo. $1.50. The University of California expressly commends this to its affiliated secondary schools for supplementary reading. " It is a thoroughly well-written and well-illustrated book, divested as much as possible of technicalities, and is admirably adapted to giving young people, for whom it was prepared, a readable account of plants and how they live and grow." Public Opinion. " One of the most delightful semi-scientific books, which every one enjoys reading and at once wishes to own. Such works present science in the most fascinating and enticing way, and from a cursory glance at paragraphs the reader is insensibly led on to chapters and thence to a thorough reading from cover to cover. . . . The work is especially well adapted for school purposes in connection with the study of elementary natural science, to which modern authorities are united in giving an early and important place in the school curriculum." The Journal of Education. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. HUTCHINSON. The Story of the Hills. A Book about Mountains for General Readers and Supplementary Reading in Schools. By H. N. HUTCHINSON. author of "The Auto- biography of the Earth," etc. Illustrated. $1.50. "A book that has long been needed, one that gives a clear account of the geological formation of mountains, and their various methods of origin, in language so clear and untechnical that it will not confuse even the most unscientific." Boston Evening Transcript. " It is as interesting as a story, and full of the most instructive informa- tion, which is given in a style that every one can comprehend. . . ." Journal of Education. INGERSOLL. Wild Neighbors. A Book about Animals. By ERNEST I NGERSOLL. Illustrated. I2mo, Cloth. $1.50. JAPP (A. H.). Hours in My Garden, and Other Nature- Sketches. With 138 Illustrations, $1.75. " It is not a book to be described, but to be rrad in the spirit in which it is written carefully and lovingly." Mail and Express. " It is a book to be read and enjoyed by both young and old." Public Opinion. POTTS (W.). From a New England Hillside. Notes from Underledge. By WILLIAM POTTS. Macmillan's Miniature Series. i8mo, 75 cents. 11 But the attraction of Mr. Potts' book is not merely in its record of the natural year. He has been building a house, and we have the humors and the satisfactions, and hopes deferred, that usually attend that business. He has been digging a well, and the truth which he has found at the bottom of that he has duly set forth. . . . Then, too, his village is Farmington, Conn., and there Miss Porter has her famous schoo's, and her young ladies flit across his page and lend their brightness to the scene. And, moreover, he sometimes comes back to the city, and he writes pleasantly of his New York club, the Century. Last, but not least, there are lucubrations on a great many personal and social topics, in which the touch is light and grace- ful and the philosophy is sound and sweet." Brooklyn Standard-Un /'//. WEED. Life Histories of American Insects. By Professor CLARENCE M. WEED, New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. Fully Illustrated. Cloth. $1.50. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 4 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN !s BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOUR- DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. 141949 Ql2JU9Z2 fNTERLIBRARY_U LD 21-l007?i-12,'43(S79Gs) 8