Prefdce- 



(a 





and this part of the record has little value beyond 

 a purely literary one. It is a guess at probable 

 truth, and not, like the rest of the book, a record 

 of careful observation. 



If the reader find himself often wondering at the 

 courage or gentleness or intelligence of these free 

 folk of the wilderness, that need not trouble or 

 puzzle him for an instant. He is not giving human 

 traits to the beasts, but is simply finding, as all do 

 find who watch animals closely, many things which 

 awaken a sympathetic response in his own heart, 

 and which he understands, more or less clearly, in 

 precisely the same way that he understands him- 

 self and his own children. 



It is not choice, but necessity, which leads us 

 to this way of looking at animals and of trying to 

 understand them. If we had a developed animal 

 psychology based upon the assumption that life 

 in one creature is essentially different from life in 

 another, and that the intelligence in a wolf's head, 

 for instance, is of a radically different kind from the 

 same intelligence in the head of some other animal 

 with two legs instead of four, then we might use 



