T HE author of a series of most sympathetic and true
relations of episodes in the life of the animals of North America, "The Kindred of the Wild," has written a second, under the title of "The Watchers of the Trails" (London : Duckworth and Co., Gs. net). It is as well illustrated( by Mr. Charles Livingston Bull) as it deserves to be, which is saying a good deal. The night scenes are not shirked in any way, and as most of the incident of animal life is nocturnal, and the stories largely deal with deeds in moon- light, if not in darkness, which is part of their fidelity to Nature and reality, this adds to the conviction carried by the author's pen.
The author knows so much of what does happen in the woods that we are inclined to take him seriously when he writes in his preface of the necessary limitations of stories of animals, and of the limitations of treatment, which truth imposes. He thinks that literal truth can be attained by stories which treat of a single incident, or of action so re- stricted as to be within the scope of a single observation. An example of this in his book is the close of the life of a musk-rat, besieged by a snowy owl as it tries to take refuge under an ice-floe, when the tide is rolling into the Bay of Fundy. The incident is true and vividly described, and it does make a complete picture of the close of a small life,— rather a tragic one, as such endings generally are. But it would only need a longer and closer study of that very interesting little creature the musk-rat—which ought to have developed a mind capable of doing as much as a beaver can ac:omplish in the way of engineering, but somehow never did so—to piece together a life of an individual of the race which would not be less true to general facts than the one "photo- graph" given. Witness, for instance, the astonishing variety, as well as correctness to known facts, and the relation of true adventures, contained in the separate lives of more than half-a-dozen typical foxes, in different parts of England and hunted by different packs, written by the late Mr. Tom Smith, of the Hambledon and Craven Hunts, Mr. Charles Roberts, the author of "The Kindred of the Wild," does not despair of being able to present such animal biographies in a form full of probable truth, because "the psychological processes of the animals are so simple and so obvious in comparison with those of man, and their actions flow so directly from the springs of impulse, that it is, as a rule, easy to infer the motives which are at any one moment impelling them." This is well within the limits of safety. More than a century ago M. Le Boi in his " Lettres Bur lea Animaux " pointed out the simplicity of most animal life, its routine, and the fewness of the incidents and " situations " which their brains were called upon to deal with. But he also
and the menace it introduces completely upset the placid and uneventful course of the lives of all the creatures whose hereditary enemies they are. Thus the killing animal intro- duces into the world of the beasts the elements of variety, interest, and fear. It plays the part of "Evil" or "The Devil" in the history of man. Man is himself either the Devil or Providence, as the case may be, in the drama of the beasts,—a Providence (as a rule) to the creatures he domesticates, but with unlimited powers of disturbance, though he does not habitually use these powers, among the wild creatures. Savage man does, to the utmost extent which be can. Civilised man plays a mixed ride. But on the whole his tendency is to exterminate the beasts.
We may select for comment four of Mr. Roberts's stories or presentations of the true life of animals. In "The Truce" a trapper with his pack on his back meets a bear, and the bear, instead of running away, asserts the individuality which makes a tame bear the most dangerous pet in the world, and resolutely pursues him with the plain intention of killing him.
The trapper runs, gets on to the rotten ice of a big river above the falls, and while the bear is still in pursuit the ice breaks up, and bear and man are hurried to apparent death on two separate ice-floes. Chance steers the man's floe into a rocky islet on the very crest of the fall. He is saved, and sees the bear coming down too, a little wide of the rock. The bear makes a spring, battles for life, and is just being swept away, when the trapper, moved by fellow-feeling for the beast, grasps it by the fur of the neck, and aids it to scramble ashore, regarding its previous action as part of the normal savagery of the woods. The bear scrambles to the other side of the islet, and sits down, just as a bear would, on the very edge, looking at the fall. Presently masses of timber come down with the ice, and set up a "jam," which in the course of a short time reaches to the bank. The trapper, used to the bnsiness of the lumber trade, notes the brief moment when the jam is solid :—
"He knew that in a very few minutes the rising weight of the flood must either sweep all before it, or flow roaring over the top of the jam in a new cataract that would sweep tho island bare.
He sprang to his feet, grasped his stick, and scanned the tumbled prpcarious surface, choosing his path. Then he turned, and looked at the bear, wondering if the animal's woodcraft were subtler than his own to distinguish when the jam was secure. He found that the bear was watching him anxiously, and not looking at the ice at all; so he chuckled and told himself that if he did not know more than a bear he had no business in the woods, and stepped resolutely forth upon the treacherous path.
Before he had gone ten paces the bear jumped up with a whimper, and followed hastily, plainly conceding that the man knew more than he."
Man as a form of Providence appears in the story of the bear which, taken as a cub, and brought up in a North
American circus, escaped and got back to the woods as a five- year-old and highly educated bear. Happy enough till winter came, he had forgotten the art of winter sleep, and, half starved,
sought the huts of some hunters, who shot him, as they thought, in self-defence. The sadness of the whole story is deep, but the moral is obvious. Either leave wild animals alone, or keep them in safe custody. The wolf at present at large on the Northumberland fells is a distinctly M- used animal. Sept in captivity, it did no harm ; and if left in its native forests it would at least be doing no more destruction than its place in the economy of Nature allowed. But when let loose among unsuspecting flocks in a wolfless land it at once becomes a common enemy. In his tale of "The Freedom of the Black-Faced Rain" the writer, perhaps unconsciously, shows the only way for the wild animal that does not prey on others to find happiness. The black-faced ram runs wild and lives on the forest fringe of the foothills of the range, with an escaped ewe and its lamb. With daunt- less courage, it defends itself and its family, even worsting for a moment an attacking bear. But it finds salvation when the man intervenes, picks up the lamb, and is followed by ewe and ram down to the house and the fold.
Without the intervention of man as a protector, true "lives" of animals can only, as a rule, be short, and end in tragedy. Every human life ends in a tragedy of a kind, but without aggravating circumstances. The "natural enemy" enters so
for a moment slackens. Should they not fall a victim to the besetting enemy, death by starvation is frequently their portion. It must await the aged ruminant whose teeth fail it equally with the old lion that can no longer kill prey to make a meal. On the other hand, the effect upon animal nerves of the constant menace of death embodied in the natural enemy is not such as might be expected. Precaution seems to become a habit with them, and the danger is not personified. Except in the case of the snake, the foe seeking to devour
them does not inspire mortal terror. Nearly all animals show a gaiety and elasticity of spirits which they would never exhibit were they in the state of mortal dread which a rather higher degree of consciousness would un- doubtedly create. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet, by all accounts, spent the earlier days of their voyage in the state of " nerves " which haunting fear of the hidden foe ought to bring about among animals. The fact is that it does not do so, though in some cases, when the creature does know that it is itself marked down for destruction, its nerves do give way completely. But as a rule it either flies with judgment or defends itself with courage, and until the hour comes it regards the constant menace in the same impersonal light as mankind regards the danger of a thunderstorm or the chances of death by earthquake or "accident."
While this life of danger and avoidance, ending in disaster, is the commoner lot of the lower creation, there are always many species which, even without human interference, lead what must be considered a really happy life, pursued by no foe, and never in want of food, though it be at the expense of other lives. Such, for instance, is the lot of a great number of birds, such as the seagulls, the great northern divers, and the rock-fowl, which no one disturbs or seeks to kill, unless it be a Polar bear which invades the nesting-places in the spring and gobbles up eggs and young. Endowed with great physical powers of swimming and of flight, with an endless supply of food in the teeming waters of the sea, their lives are happy and they have no history. But apart from such favoured races, true lives of animals can, as a rule, only be made to end happily if they are under the protection of man. Then, from the tame trout in the garden pool to the old horse in the paddock or the veteran dog dreaming by the fire, their lives are credited with the full guarantee of happi- ness which regularity and routine bring even to voyagers in the Arctic night, and their old age is protected against the terrors which must surround it in the wilderness.
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