ANIMAL COMMUNICATION 
the deer and the moose and the black bear and the 
beaver of the Pacific slope are almost identical in 
their habits and traits with those of the Atlantic 
slope. 
In my observations of the birds of the far West, 
I went wrong in my reckoning but once: the West- 
ern meadowlark has a new song. How or where he 
got it is a mystery; it seems to be in some way the 
gift of those great, smooth, flowery, treeless, dimpled 
hills. But the swallow was familiar, and the robin 
and the wren and the highhole, while the wood- 
chuck I saw and heard in Wyoming might have 
been the “chuck” of my native hills. The eagle is 
an eagle the world over. When I was a boy I saw, 
one autumn day, an eagle descend with extended 
talons upon the backs of a herd of young cattle that 
were accompanied by a cosset-sheep and were feed- 
ing upon a high hill. The object of the eagle seemed 
to be to separate the one sheep from the cattle, or to 
frighten them all into breaking their necks in trying 
to escape him. But neither result did he achieve. 
In the Yellowstone Park, President Roosevelt and 
Major Pitcher saw a golden eagle trying the same 
tactics upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling. 
The eagle doubtless had his eye upon the yearling, 
though he would probably have been quite satis- 
fied to have driven one of the older ones down a 
precipice. His chances of a dinner would have been 
equally good. 
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