X 
Northern Trails. Book I 
I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which 
I described in “ Northern Trails ” ; but I give these three simply 
to show that what one man discovers as a surprising trait of 
some individual wolf or deer may be common enough when we 
open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves do not always or 
often kill in this way has nothing to do with the question. I 
know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in pairs 
and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws 
the game, while the other invariably does the killing at the 
throat. In another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, 
in Ontario, I have the records of several deer killed by wolves 
in a single winter; and in every case the wolf slipped up behind 
his game and cut the femoral artery, or the inner side of the 
hind leg, and then drew back quietly, allowing the deer to bleed 
to death. 
The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it 
is not necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you 
believe. I have studied animals, not as species but as individuals, 
and have recorded some things which other and better naturalists 
have overlooked ; but I have sought for facts, first of all, as zeal¬ 
ously as any biologist, and have recorded only what I have every 
reason to believe is true. That these facts are unusual means 
simply that we have at last found natural history to be interest¬ 
ing, just as the discovery of unusual men and incidents gives 
charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There may 
be honest errors or mistakes in these books — and no one tries 
half so hard as the author to find and correct them — but mean¬ 
while the fact remains that, though six volumes of the Wood 
Folk books have already been published, only three slight errors 
have thus far been pointed out, and these were promptly and 
gratefully acknowledged. 
