46 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



made not to let the rats talk like the elephants, 

 but to keep each in its right place is not as 

 easy as perhaps it looks. Another difficulty 

 is to show the animals in their wild surround- 

 ings, and not as they are in the Zoological 

 Gardens or Natural History Museum. I can 

 assure the reader, from experience, that an old 

 moose suddenly raising its immense and hideous 

 face from the lily-pads, as a canoe shoots 

 silently round the bend of a river and almost 

 to its feet, looks not less than twenty feet high, 

 as it dashes off into the forest with a crash 

 like that of an avalanche. I can say this, for 

 I have sat in that canoe. It is also important 

 to guard against deceptive impressions formed 

 under unusual conditions. There are, as a 

 case in point, Indian birds gifted with voices 

 which, though not perhaps equal to the night- 

 ingale's best, are by no means unpleasant 

 when heard in an aviary, for the listener can 

 go away when he has had enough. It is a 

 very different matter for Anglo-Indians com- 

 pelled to listen to these noisy fowl day after 

 day as they lie sweltering in their hammocks, 

 goaded by the heat and irritation of exile in 

 the East ; and it is hardly surprising that they 

 should have dubbed one of the most familiar 

 of these unconscious offenders the " brain-fever 

 bird." 



