NATURE IN LITTLE 



once seen the golden eagle soaring above my na- 

 tive hills and that was seventy years ago. No wild 

 animal of the cat tribe other than the ordinary wild- 

 cat had been seen or heard in my native town in the 

 Catskills in my time, till a few years ago, when a 

 new cry was heard. Let me tell about it. 



One still, moonlight October night, as I was sleep- 

 ing on the porch, a bit of natural history on four 

 legs which I had never heard before, let out such a 

 cry and wail, under the hill within a stone's throw 

 below me, that I was startled and puzzled beyond 

 measure. I thought I knew the natural history of the 

 Catskills pretty well, but here was a cry absolutely 

 new to me. There was first a loud, strident, murder- 

 ous scream, such as a boy might utter when be- 

 side himself with fear or pain, followed by a long, 

 tapering moan and wail, like the plaint of a lost soul. 

 It was almost blood-curdling. Five times, with less 

 than half a minute interval, the creature or lost 

 spirit rent the midnight silence with this cry, fol- 

 lowed by the wail of utterly hopeless despair. I 

 raised myself up on my elbow and listened. Each 

 scream echoed off in the woods a few hundred yards 

 away, but the moan faded away in the moonlight 

 and became a mere wraith of sound. I could not help 

 visualizing it, and seeing it mount up toward the 

 moon and become fairly blue and transparent in its 

 beams. I was partially disabled from the kick of 

 a horse about whom I had become too coltish in 

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