4 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



rushes, the treacherous bog under foot concealed by 

 a carpet of soft mosses, coarse grasses, and rank 

 green skunk cabbages, is just the same in appear- 

 ance as it was when the occasional tracks left by 

 the moccasined feet of the red man were the only 

 signs of human life in the vast wilderness of a con- 

 tinent! 



You are face to face with Nature. Not in her 

 most entrancing form, but always wonderfully 

 beautiful when unmarred by the hand of man. 



Here within sound of the screaming locomotives 

 the woodcock rears its persecuted family. Here 

 timid Bob White has found a temporary retreat, 

 and even ventures to whistle, in a subdued tone, 

 his well-known call to his dapper little mate as she 

 sits on her scores of pretty white eggs. 



Close by the inoffensive muskrat gnaws content- 

 edly at a root; the bullfrog bellows forth his 

 sonorous notes; red-winged blackbirds, robins, cat- 

 birds, hawks, and owls build their nests and rear 

 their young undisturbed by the dreaded small boy. 

 The gray squirrel bounds among the branches 

 overhead, and the beautiful little flying squirrel 

 peeps from its hole in the red cedar, all as if the 

 noise and smoke of a great city were not within 

 hearing and sight but for the dense underbrush. 

 Just such places exist inside the corporation lines 

 of New York City. 



The poison sumac and thorny vines form a bar- 

 rier which leaves no charms for the small boy 

 and past which few pot hunters venture. The 



