How Animals Talk 



place to another motive. The young still display 

 their natural bent freely; but the old have heard 

 too many of our guns, have been too often dis- 

 turbed by our meddlesome dogs or worthless cats, 

 have suffered too much at the hands of outrageous 

 egg-collectors or skin-collectors to be any longer 

 drawn to us when we go afield. As you go farther 

 away from civilization it becomes easier to play 

 on the animals' native curiosity; in the far North 

 or the remote jungle, or wherever man is happily 

 unknown, they still come fearlessly to investigate 

 you, or to stand quiet, like the ptarmigan, watch- 

 ing with innocent eyes as you pass them by. In 

 the intermediate regions, which are harried by 

 sportsmen for a brief period in the autumn and 

 then left to a long solitude, the animals are wild 

 or tame according to season; and it has seemed to 

 me, not always but on occasions, that in some 

 subtle way they distinguish between man and 

 man, taking alarm at the first sniff of a hunter, 

 but stopping to show their interest in a harmless 

 woods-rover. 



This last is a mere theory, to be sure, and to 

 some it may appear a fanciful one; but it rests, be 

 assured, upon repeated experience. Thus, I came 

 once at evening to a camp of hunters who were in 

 a sorry plight. They were in a good deer country, 

 and had counted largely on venison to supply 



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