Preface^ 



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— precisely as we do. A wild animal's life may 

 indeed be far below ours, but he lives much in 

 that pleasant border-land between thought and feel- 

 ing where we so often find ourselves in our quiet 

 moments, and there is no earthly need to make a 

 mystery of him by talking vaguely of instinct, since 

 so much of his life corresponds to our own and 

 becomes intelligible to us the moment we lay aside 

 our. prejudice or hostility and watch him with a 

 patient and friendly interest. 



I make no claim whatever that animals reason 

 or think or feel as men and women do. I have 

 watched them too long for that ; and sitting beside 

 the beaver's village in the still twilight of the wil- 

 derness I find enough to occupy eyes and mind 

 without making any comparison with the unquiet 

 cities of men far away. But here before me is a life 

 to be understood before it can be described, — a life, 

 not an automaton, with its own joys and fears, its 

 own problems, and its own intelligence ; and the 

 only conceivable way for me to understand it is to 

 put myself for a moment in its place and lay upon 

 it the measure of the only life of which I have any 



