How Animals Talk 



search of the best picking. Sitting there in the 

 breathing solitude, occupied with the task of filling 

 my tin cup with berries and well content with my 

 lot (for the woods always had a fascination for 

 me, and seemed most friendly when I was alone), 

 I would presently "feel" that something was 

 watching me. There was never any suggestion of 

 fear in the impression, only an awakening to the 

 fact that I was not alone, that some living thing 

 was near me. Then, as I looked up expectantly, 

 I would almost always find a bird slipping noise- 

 lessly through the branches overhead, or a beastie 

 creeping through the cover at my side ; and in his 

 bright eyes, his shy approach, his withdrawal to 

 appear in another spot, I read plainly enough that 

 he was asking who I was or what I was doing 

 there. And by a whistled tune or a drumming on 

 my cup, or by flashing a sunbeam into his eyes 

 from a pocket glass, I always tried to hold him as 

 long as I could. 



This curious sense or feeling of being watched, 

 by the way, is very real in some men, who do not 

 regard it as a matter of chance or imagination. I 

 have known of two elaborate courses of "labora- 

 tory" experiments which aimed to determine how 

 far such a feeling is trustworthy, and both re- 

 sulted in a neutral or fifty-fifty conclusion; but 

 I wonder, if the experiments had been tried on 



' [196] 



