Most mother animals tongue their little 

 ones freely. Now is that a caress, or is it 

 some hygienic measure begun at birth, when 

 she devours all traces of the birth-envelopes 

 and licks the little ones clean lest the nose 

 of some hungry prowler bring him near to 

 destroy the family? Certainly the young 

 are conscious of the soft tongue that rubs 

 them fondly, and so when they lick their 

 own wounds it may be only a memory and 

 an imitation, two factors, by the way, which 

 lie at the bottom of all elemental education. 

 That explanation, of course, leaves the am- 

 putated leg out of the question; and the 

 surgery does not stop here. 



When a boy, and still barbarian enough 

 to delight in trapping, partly from a love of 

 the chase that was born in me, and partly 

 to put money into a boy's empty pocket, I 

 once caught a muskrat in a steel trap that 

 slid off into deep water at the first pull and 

 so drowned the creature mercifully. This 

 was due to the careful instructions of Natty 

 Dingle, at whose feet I sat to learn wood- 

 craft, and who used the method to save all 



