LEAF AND TENDRIL 



communicate without words, or signs, or signals. 

 There are many things in animal life, such as the 

 precise concert of action among flocks of birds and 

 fishes and insects, and, at times, the unity of im- 

 pulse among land animals, that give support to the 

 notion that the wild creatures in some way come to 

 share one another's mental or emotional states to a 

 degree and in a way that we know little or nothing of. 

 It seems important to their well-being that they 

 should have such a gift — something to make good 

 to them the want of language and mental concepts, 

 and insure unity of action in the tribe. Their sea- 

 sonal migrations from one part of the country to 

 another are no doubt the promptings of an inborn 

 instinct called into action in all by the recurrence of 

 the same outward conditions ; but the movements 

 of the flock or the school seem to imply a common 

 impulse that is awakened on the instant in each 

 member of the flock. The animals have no systems 

 or methods in the sense that we have, but like con- 

 ditions with them always awaken like impulses, and 

 unity of action is reached without outward com- 

 munication. 



The lower animals seem to have certain of our foi- 

 bles, and antagonisms, and unreasoning petulancies. 

 I was reminded of this in reading the story Presi- 

 dent Roosevelt tells of a Colorado bear he once 

 watched at close quarters. The bear was fussing 

 around a carcass of a deer, preparatory to burying 

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