viii Preface. 



with a gun sometimes instead of an opera-glass. A mink is 

 good for nothing but his skin ; a red squirrel — I hesitate to 

 tell his true character lest I spoil too many tender but false 

 ideals about him all at once. 



The point is this, that sympathy is too true a thing to be 

 aroused falsely, and that a wise discrimination, which recog- 

 nizes good and evil in the woods, as everywhere else in the 

 world, and which loves the one and hates the other, is vastly 

 better for children, young and old, than the blind sentimen- 

 tality aroused by ideal animals with exquisite human pro- 

 pensities. Therefore I wrote the story of Kagax, simply 

 to show him as he is, and so to make you hate him. 



In this one chapter, the story of Kagax the Weasel, I have 

 gathered into a single animal the tricks and cruelties of a 

 score of vicious little brutes that I have caught red-handed at 

 their work. In the other chapters I have, for the most part, 

 again searched my old notebooks and the records of wilder- 

 ness camps, and put the individual animals down just as I 



found them. ,,, , ^ 



Wm. J. Long. 



Stamford, September, 1900. 



