How Animals Talk 



The place you select for calling may be a tiny 

 bog in a vast forest, or a little, nameless beaver- 

 meadow by a lake or river. It is like many other 

 such places, near or far, and the bull may come 

 from a distance, crossing lakes, rivers, bogs and 

 dense forest on his way; but he never seems to 

 make a mistake or to be at a loss in locating the 

 call. On a still night I have heard a bull answer 

 me from a mountain five or six miles away; yet 

 in the morning there he was, waiting expectantly 

 for his mate near the bit of open shore where I 

 had called him; and to reach that spot he must 

 either have crossed the lake by swimming, a dis- 

 tance of two miles, or else have circled it on a 

 wide detour. That he should come such a dis- 

 tance through woods and waters, and pick the 

 right spot from a hundred others on either side, 

 seems to me not a matter of ears or experience 

 but of chumfo, or absolute knowledge. 



Another and more interesting verification of the 

 chumfo philosophy is open to any man who will 

 go quietly through the big woods by moonlight, 

 putting himself back amid primal or animal con- 

 ditions, and observing himself closely as he does so. 

 The man who has not traveled the wilderness alone 

 at night has a vivid and illuminating experience 

 awaiting him. He is amazed, so soon as he over- 

 comes the first unnatural feeling of fear, to find 



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