Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 3

deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just
behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.
[Signed] G.W. BARTLETT, Superintendent.
I certify that I lived for twenty years in northern Nebraska and Dakota,
in a region where timber wolves were abundant.... I saw one horse that
had just been killed by a wolf. The front of his chest was torn open to
the heart. There was no other wound on the body. I once watched a
wolf kill a stray horse on the open prairie. He kept nipping at the hind
legs, making the horse turn rapidly till he grew dizzy and fell down.
Then the wolf snapped or bit into his chest.... The horse died in a few
moments.
[Signed] STEPHEN JONES (HEPIDAN).
I certify that in November, 1900, while surveying in Wyoming, my
party saw two wolves chase a two-year-old colt over a cliff some
fifteen or sixteen feet high. I was on the spot with two others
immediately after the incident occurred. The only injuries to the colt,
aside from a broken leg, were deep lacerations made by wolf fangs in
the chest behind the foreshoulder. In addition to this personal
observation I have frequently heard from hunters, herders, and cowboys
that big wolves frequently kill deer and other animals by snapping at
the chest.
[Signed] F.S. PUSEY.
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 zealously 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 interesting, 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
meanwhile 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.
The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all
true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things that
wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are not
frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our
preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing
is rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but
personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet
recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why
a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the
greater joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to
understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing
seems to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just
beginning to understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own
barbarism, our lust of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and
especially our prejudices which stand in the way of greater knowledge.
Meanwhile the critic who asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will

or will not do under certain conditions only proves how carelessly he
has watched them and how little he has learned of Nature's infinite
variety.
WILLIAM J. LONG
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONTENTS
WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
THE OLD