How Animals Talk 



ting our compass bearings from the topmost twigs 

 of the evergreens, which slant mostly in one direc- 

 tion. After blundering around for a time without 

 getting any nearer camp or familiar landmarks, 

 Simmo remarked: "Dese twigs lie like devil. I 

 guess I bes' find-urn way myself." And he did 

 find it, and hold it even after darkness fell, by 

 instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have 

 been a matter of feeling rather than of sense or 

 observation, for his only explanation was, "Oh, 

 w'en I goin' right I feel good; but w'en I goin' 

 wrong I oneasy." 



This natural feeling or impression of things be- 

 yond the range of sight, this extra sense, or churnfo 

 unity of all the senses, is probably akin to another 

 feeling by which the animal or man becomes 

 aware of distant persons, or of distant moods or 

 emotions. The sleeping dog's alarm beneath the 

 weakened derrick, or the sleeping Indian's uneasi- 

 ness near the doomed birch-stub, might be ex- 

 plained on purely physical grounds: some tremor 

 of parting fibers, some warning vibration too faint 

 for eardrums but heavy enough to shake a more 

 delicately poised nerve center, reached the inner 

 beast or the inner man and roused him to impend- 

 ing danger. (There is a deal of babble in this 

 explanation, I admit, and still a mystery at the 

 end of it.) But when a man or a brute receives 



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