Note to the Reader 



of Toronto, and many of my companions will 

 remember him. He was killed in 1889, be- 

 tween the Sugar Loaf and Castle Frank, by a 

 creature whose name I have withheld, as it is 

 the species, rather than the individual, that I 

 wish to expose. 



Silverspot, Raggylug, and Vixen are founded 

 on real characters. Though I have ascribed to 

 them the adventures of more than one of their 

 kind, every incident in their biographies is from 

 life. 



The fact that these stories are true is the rea- 

 son why all are tragic. The life of a wild ani- 

 mal always has a tragic end. 



Such a collection of histories naturally sug- 

 gests a common thought — a moral it would have 

 been called in the last century. No doubt each 

 different mind will find a moral to its taste, but 

 I hope some will herein find emphasized a 

 moral as old as Scripture — we and the beasts 

 are kin. Man has nothing that the animals 

 have not at least a vestige of, the animals have 

 nothing that man does not in some degree share. 



12 



