Preface 
When I look at the names of the animals whose 
stories are given here, I feel much as an artist might 
in looking at sundry portraits of his friends and 
ideals painted by himself. 
Some of these I personally knew. Some are 
composites, and are merely natural history in 
story form. Way-atcha, Atalapha, and Foam are 
of the latter kind. 
Foam is an effort to show how the wild things 
instinctively treat themselves in sickness. They 
have their herbs, their purges, their sudorifics, their 
hot and cold baths, their mud baths, their fastings, 
their water sluicings, their massage, their rest cure, 
and their sun treatment. 
The final scene when the Razor-back utterly de- 
feated the Bear was witnessed and related to me 
long ago by a Michigan lumberman, whose name 
I cannot recall. The minor incidents are largely 
from personal observation of wild hogs in various 
parts of America. I am in hopes that some will 
Vv 
