How Animals Talk 



more than most other brutes, receive silent warn- 

 ings from one another, or even from a concealed 

 hunter, who may by his excitement send forth 

 some kind of emotional alarm. When you are 

 sitting quietly in the woods, and a pack of wolves 

 pass near without noticing their one enemy, though 

 he is in plain sight, you think that they are no 

 more cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is 

 true, so far as their cunning depends on what they 

 may see or hear. Once when I was crossing a 

 frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves 

 rushed out of the nearest cover and came at me on 

 the jump, mistaking me for a deer or some other 

 game animal; which does not speak very highly 

 for either their eyes or their judgment. They were 

 the most surprised brutes in all Canada when they 

 discovered their mistake. But when you hide 

 with ready rifle near some venison which the same 

 wolves have killed ; when you see them break out 

 of the woods upon the ice, running free and con- 

 fident to the food which they know is awaiting 

 them; when you see them stop suddenly, as if 

 struck, though they cannot possibly see or smell 

 you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to 

 a meeting-point on another lake well, then you 

 may conclude, as I do, that part of a wolfs cunning 

 lies deeper than his five senses. 

 Another lupine trait which first surprised and 



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