A little brother to the bear, and other animal studies

William J. Long
BOOKS BY WILLIAM-J-LONG A Little Brother to the Bear FOLLOWING THE DEER SCHOOL OF THE WOODS BEASTS OF THE FIELD FOWLS OF THE AIR WAYS OF WOOD FOLK WOOD FOLK AT SCHOOL WILDERNESS WAYS SECRETS OF THE WOODS
A Little Brother to the Bear

A fierce battle in the tree-tops
A Little Brother to the Bear and other Animal Studies BY William J Long Author of School of the Woods Beasts of the Field Fowls of the Air Wood Folk Series etc. Illustrated by Charles Copeland Boston U.S.A. and London GINN AND COMPANY THE ATHENÆUM PRESS 1903
Entered at Stationers' Hall Copyright, 1903 By WILLIAM J. LONG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
To Lois, who likes Bears, I dedicate this book of the Bear and his little brother.
T HE object of this little book, so far as it has an object beyond that of sharing a simple pleasure of mine with others, will be found in the first chapter, entitled The Point of View ; and the title will be explained in the chapter on A Little Brother to the Bear that follows.
All the sketches here are reproduced from my own note-books largely, or from my own memory, and the observations cover a period of some thirty years,—from the time when I first began to prowl about the home woods with a child's wonder and delight to my last hard winter trip into the Canadian wilderness. Some of the chapters, like those of the Woodcock and the Coon, represent the characteristics of scores of animals and birds of the same species; others, like those of the Bear and Eider-Duck in Animal Surgery, represent the acute intelligence of certain individual animals that nature seems to have lifted enormously above the level of their fellows; and in a single case—that of the Toad—I have, for the story's sake, gathered into one creature the habits of four or five of these humble little helpers of ours that I have watched at different times and in different places.
The queer names herein used for beasts and birds are those given by the Milicete Indians, and represent usually some sound or suggestion of the creatures themselves. Except where it is plainly stated otherwise, all the incidents and observations have passed under my own eyes and have been confirmed later by other observers. In the records, while holding closely to the facts, I have simply tried to make all these animals as interesting to the reader as they were to me when I discovered them.