How Animals Talk 



is ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an 

 egg. The natural timidity of all wild creatures is 

 a protective and wholesome instinct, radically dif- 

 ferent from the fear which makes cowards of men 

 who have learned to trace causes and to anticipate 

 consequences. 



So much for the mental analysis ; and your eyes 

 emphasize the same conclusion when you look 

 frankly upon the natural world. The very attitude 

 or visible expression of birds or beasts when you 

 meet them in their native woods, feeding, playing, 

 resting, seeking their mates, or roving freely with 

 their little ones (all pleasurable matters, constitut- 

 ing nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is 

 enough in itself to refute the absurd notion of a 

 general reign of terror in nature. If you are wise, 

 therefore, you will get rid of that prejudice, or at 

 least hold it in abeyance till the animals themselves 

 teach you how senseless it is. To go out obsessed 

 with the notion of fear is to blind your eyes to the 

 great comedy of the woods. 



The second thing to know, and to remember 

 when you go forth to see, is that sensitive creatures 

 dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when 

 they find a pair of eyes intently fixed upon them. 

 You yourself retain something of this ancient 

 animal inheritance, it seems, since there is nothing 

 which more surely excites alarm if you are timid, or 



[178] 



