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HOW ANIMALS TALK

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The old vixen lies apart where she can overlook the play and the neighborhood.

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HOW ANIMALS TALK

And Other Pleasant Studies of Birds and Beasts

BY
William J. Long
Author of “School of the Woods” “Northern Trails” “Brier-Patch Philosophy” etc.
Illustrations and Decorations by
CHARLES COPELAND

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

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How Animals Talk

Copyright 1919 by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published August, 1919

G–T

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Illustrations

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How Animals Talk

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I

A Little Dog-Comedy

Did you ever see two friendly dogs meet when one tried to tell the other of something he had discovered, when they touched noses, stood for a moment in strange, silent parley, then wagged their tails with mutual understanding and hurried off together on a canine junket?

That was the little comedy which first drew my attention to the matter of animal communication, many years ago, and set my feet in the unblazed trail we are now to follow. And a very woodsy trail you shall find it, dim and solitary, with plenty of “blind” spots where one may easily go astray, and without any promise of what waits at the other end of it. [[4]]

One summer afternoon I was reading by the open window, while my old setter, Don, lay at on his side in the shade of a syringa-bush. He had scooped out a hollow to suit him, and was enjoying the touch of the cool earth when a fat little terrier, a neighbor’s pet, came running with evident excitement to wake the old dog up. Don half raised his head, recognized his friend Nip and thumped the ground lazily with his tail.

“It’s all right, little dog. You’re always excited over something of no consequence; but don’t bother me this hot day,” he said, in dog-talk, and dropped his head to sleep again.

But Nip was not to be put aside, having something big on his mind. He nudged Don sharply, and the old dog sprang to his feet as if galvanized. For an interval of perhaps five seconds they stood motionless, tense, their noses almost touching; then Don’s plume began to wave.

“Oh, I see!” he said; and Nip’s stubby tail whipped violently, as if to add, “Thank Heaven you do, at last!” The next moment they were away on the jump and disappeared round a corner of the house.

Here was comedy afoot, so I slipped out through the back door to follow it. The dogs took no notice of me, and probably had no notion that they were observed; for I took pains to keep out of sight [[5]]till the play was over. Through the hay-field they led me, across the pasture lot, and over a wall at the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering through a chink of the wall, I saw Nip dancing and barking at a rock-pile, and between two of the rocks was a woodchuck cornered.

For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that same woodchuck, which had a den on the hillside in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some garden truck. A dozen times, to my knowledge, the little dog had rushed the rascal; but as Nip was fat and the chuck cunning, the chase always ended the same way, one comedian diving into the earth with a defiant whistle, leaving the other to scratch or bark impotently outside.

Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of such an uneven game; but a terrier is not a reasonable dog. At first Nip tried his best to drag Don into the affair; but the old setter had long since passed the heyday of youth, when any kind of an adventure could interest him. In the presence of grouse or woodcock he would still become splendidly animate, and then the years would slip from him as a garment; but to stupid groundhogs and all such “small deer” he was loftily indifferent. He was an aristocrat, of true-blue blood, and I had trained him to let all creatures save his proper game severely alone. So, after following [[6]]Nip once and finding nothing more exciting than a hole in the ground, with the familiar smell of woodchuck about it, he had left the terrier to his own amusement.

When speed failed, or wind, it was vastly amusing to watch Nip try to adopt cat-strategy, hiding, creeping, scheming to cut off the enemy’s retreat. Almost every day he would have another go at the impossible; but he was too fat, too slow, too clumsy, and also too impatient after his doggy kind. By a great effort he could hold still when his game poked a cautious head out of the burrow for a look all around; but no sooner did the chuck begin to move away from his doorway than the little dog began to fidget in his hiding-place, and his tail (the one part of a dog that cannot lie) would wildly betray his emotions. Invariably he made his rush too soon, and the woodchuck whistled into his den with time to spare.

On this summer afternoon, however, Nip had better luck or used better tactics. Whether he went round the hill and came over the top from an unexpected quarter, or lay in wait in his accustomed place with more than his accustomed patience, I have no means of knowing. By some new device or turn of luck he certainly came between the game and its stronghold; whereupon the chuck scuttled down the hill and took refuge among [[7]]the rocks. There Nip’s courage failed him. He was a little dog with a big bark; and the sight of the grizzled veteran with back against a stone and both flanks protected probably made him realize that it is one thing to chase a chuck which runs away, but quite another thing to enter his cave while he stands facing you, his beady eyes snapping and his big teeth bare. So after a spell of brave barking Nip had rushed off to fetch a larger dog.

All that was natural enough, and very doglike; at least it so appeared to me, after seeing other little dogs play a similar part; but the amazing feature of this particular comedy was that Nip had no difficulty in getting help from a champion who had refused to be interested up to that critical moment. Through the wall I saw him lead Don straight to the rocks. The old dog thrust in his head, yelped once as he was bitten, dragged out the chuck, gave him a shake and a quieting crunch; then, without the slightest evident concern, he left Nip to worry and finish and brag over the enemy.

It is part of the fascination of watching any animal comedy that it always leaves you with a question; and the unanswerable question here was, How did Nip let the other dog know what he wanted? [[8]]

If you are intimate enough with dogs to have discovered that they depend on their noses for all accurate information, that they have, as it were, a smellscape instead of a landscape forever before them, you will say at once, “Don must have smelled woodchuck”; but that is a merely convenient answer which does not explain or even consider the facts. Don already knew the general smell of woodchuck very well, and was, moreover, acquainted with the odor of the particular woodchuck to which his little dog-chum had been laying siege. He knew it at first hand from the creature itself, having once put his nose into the burrow; he got a secondary whiff of it every time Nip returned from his fruitless digging; and he was utterly indifferent to such foolish hunting. Many times before the day of reckoning arrived Nip had rushed into the yard in the same excitement, with the same reek of earth and woodchuck about him; and, so far as one may judge a dog by his action, Don took no interest in the little dog’s story. Yet he was off on the instant of hearing that the familiar smell of woodchuck now meant something more than a hole in the ground.

That some kind of message passed between the two dogs is, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt; and it is precisely this silent and mysterious kind of communication (the kind that occurs when your [[9]]dog comes to you when you are reading, looks intently into your face, and tells you without words that he wants a drink or that it is time for him to be put to bed) that I propose now to make clear. Before we enter that trail of silence, however, there is a much simpler language, such as is implied in the whistle of a quail or the howl of a wolf, which we must try as best we can to interpret. For unless our ears are keen enough to distinguish between the food and hunting calls of an animal, or between bob-white’s love note and the yodel that brings his scattered flock together, it will be idle for us to ask what message or impulse a mother wolf sends after a running cub when she lifts her head to look at him steadily, and he checks his rush to return to her side as if she had made the murky woods echo to her assembly clamor.

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II

Cries of the Day and Night

The simplest or most obvious method of animal communication is by inarticulate cries, expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleasure, and other primal needs or emotions. The wild creatures are mostly silent, and so is the bulk of their “talk,” I think; but they frequently raise their voice in the morning or evening twilight, and by observing them attentively at such a time you may measure the effect of their so-called language. Thus, you see plainly that to one call the animal cocks his ear and gives answer; at another call he becomes wildly excited; a third passes over him without visible result; a fourth sets his feet in motion toward the sound or else [[11]]sends him flying away from it, according to its message or import.

That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore, beyond serious doubt; but whether they have, like our simplest words, any definite or unchanging value is still a question, the probable answer being “No,” since a word is the symbol of a thought or an idea; but animals live in a world of emotion, and even our human emotions are mostly dumb or inarticulate. I must give this negative answer, notwithstanding the fact that I have learned to call various birds and beasts, and that I can meet Hotspur’s challenge on hearing Glendower boast that he can call spirits from the vasty deep:

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?

Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you know how to give the right call; but I am still doubtful whether among themselves their audible cries are ever quite so intelligible as is their silence.

This question of animal speech has received a different and more positive answer, by the way, from a man who has spent many years in persistent observation of wild apes and monkeys. After watching the lively creatures from his cage in the jungle, attracting them by means of various fruits and recording their jabber in a phonograph, he [[12]]claims to have discovered the monkey words for food, water, danger and other elementary matters. Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these simian words the monkeys of another locality seem to understand them, since they run to the proper dish at the word “food” or show evident signs of alarm at the word “danger.”

It is doubtless much easier to deny such a conclusion than to prove or disprove it; but denial is commonly the first refuge of ignorance and the last of dogmatism, and with these we are not concerned. I do not know whether Garner claims too much or too little for his monkeys; I have never had opportunity to test the matter in the jungle, and the caged monkeys with which I have occasionally experimented are too debased of habit or too imbecile in their affections to interest one who has long dealt with clean wild brutes. At times, however, when I have watched a monkey with an organ-grinder, I have noticed that the unhappy little beast displays a lively interest in the chitter of chimney-swifts—a lingo which to my dull ears sounds remarkably like monkey-talk. But that is a mere impression, momentary and of little value; while Garner speaks soberly after long and immensely patient observation.

To return to first-hand evidence: among wild creatures of my acquaintance the crows come [[13]]nearer than any others to something remotely akin to human speech. Several times I have known a tame crow to learn a few of our words and, what is much more significant, to show his superiority over parrots and other mere mimics by using one or more of the words intelligently. There was one crow, for example, that would repeat the word “hungry” in guttural fashion whenever he thought it was time for him to dine. He used this word very frequently when his dinner or supper hour drew nigh, giving me the impression, since he did not confuse it with two other words of his vocabulary, that he associated the word with the notion of food or of eating; and if this impression be true to fact, it indicates more than appears on the surface. We shall come to the wild crows and their “talk” presently; the point here is, that if this bird could use a new human word in association with a primal need, there is nothing to prevent him from using a sound or symbol of his own in the same way. In other words, he must have some small faculty of language.

Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy named Pharaoh Necho because of his hippety-hop walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games, play, social gatherings of every kind. To excitement from any source, whether bird or brute or human, he was as responsive as a weather-vane; [[14]]but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to something that looked like joking, since he could never see a contemplative cat or a litter of sleepy little pigs without going out of his way to tweak a tail and stir up trouble. At times he would watch, keeping out of sight in a leafy tree or on the roof of the veranda, till Tabby, the house cat, came out and sat looking over the yard, her tail stretched out behind her. If she lay down to sleep, or sat with tail curled snugly around her forepaws, she was never molested; but the moment her tail was out of her sight and mind Necho saw the chance for which he had apparently been waiting. Gliding noiselessly down behind the unconscious cat he would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting tail with his beak. It was a startling blow, and at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed he would fly off, “chuckling” immoderately.

When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys assembled he would neglect even his dinner to join them; and presently, without ever having been taught, he announced himself master of a new art by yelling, “Ya-hoo! Come on!” which was the rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood. He said this in ludicrous fashion, but unmistakably to those who knew him. Sometimes he would croak the words softly to himself, as if memorizing them or pleased at the sound; but for the most [[15]]part he waited till boys were gathering for a swim or a ball game, when he would launch himself into flight and go skimming down the road, whooping out his new cry exultantly. What meaning he attached to the words, whether of boys or fun or mere excitement, I have no means of knowing.

After learning this much of our speech Necho took to the wild, following a call of the blood, I think; for it was springtime when he disappeared, and the crows’ mating clamor sounded from every woodland. These birds are said to kill every member of their tribe who returns to them after living with men, and the saying may have some truth in it. I have noticed that many tame crows are like tame baboons in that they seem mortally afraid of their wild kinsmen; but Necho was apparently an exception. If he had any trouble when first he returned to his flock, the matter was settled without our knowledge, and during the following autumn there was evidence that he was again in good standing. Long afterward, as I roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty “Ya-hoo! Come on!” from where he led a yelling rabble of crows to chivvy a sleeping owl or jeer at a running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry sounded over the tree-tops when I could not see him or know what mischief was afoot. He never [[16]]returned to the house, and never again joined our play or allowed a boy to come near him.

Not all crows have this “gift of speech”; and the fact that one tame crow learns to use a few English words, while five or six others hold fast to their own lingo, has led to the curious belief that, if you want to make a crow talk, you must split his tongue. How such a belief originated is a mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread when I was a boy that no sooner was a young crow taken from a nest than jack-knives were sharpened, and the leathery end of the crow’s tongue was solemnly split after grave debate whether a seventh or a third part was the proper medicine. If the crow talked after that, it was proof positive that the belief was true; and if he remained dumb, it was a sign that there was something wrong in the splitting; which is characteristic of a large part of our natural-history reasoning. The debates I have heard or read on the “unanswerable” question of how a chipmunk digs a hole without leaving any earth about the entrance (a question with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly suggestive of the split-tongue superstition of crow language.

Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe, only a small proportion showed any tendency to repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I judge, [[17]]the same crows that in a wild state may occasionally be heard whistling like a jay, or “barking” or “hooting” or making some other call which ordinary crows do not or cannot make, and which shows an individual talent of mimicry. This last, which I have repeatedly observed among wild crows, is a very different matter from speech; but from the fact that these mimics learn to use a few English words more or less intelligently one might not be far wrong in concluding that every crow has in his brain a small undeveloped nest of cells corresponding to our “bump” of language.

A closer observation of the wild birds may confirm this possibility. Thus, when you hear a solitary crow in a tree-top crying, “Haw! Haw!” monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail every time he repeats it, you may be sure that somewhere within range of his eye or voice a flock of his own kind are on the ground, feeding. That this particular haw is a communication to his fellows, telling them that the sentinel is on watch and all is well, seems to me very probable. There are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously resolve the whole phenomenon into blind chance or accident; but that does not square very well with the intelligence of crow nature as I have observed it; nor does it explain the fact that once, when I avoided the sentinel and crept near enough to [[18]]shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly guarding, the rest were no sooner out of danger than they whirled upon the recreant and beat him savagely to the ground.

If you are interested enough to approach any crow-sentinel in a casual or indifferent kind of way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly or directly), you must note that his haw changes perceptibly while you are yet far off. It is no longer formal or monotonous; nor is it uttered with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly see. You would pronounce and spell the cry exactly as before (it should be written aw or haw, not caw, for there is no consonant sound in it); but if your ears are keen, they will detect an entirely different accent or inflection, as they detect different accents and meanings when a sailor’s casual or vibrant “Sail ho!” sings down from the crow-nest of a ship. Now run a few steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and creep, and instantly the haw changes again. This time the accent is sharper even to your dull ears; and hardly is the cry uttered when all the crows of the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading swiftly away to the woods and safety.

Apparently, therefore, this simple haw of the crow is like a root word of certain ancient languages, the Chinese, for example, which has several [[19]]different intonations to express different ideas, but which all sound alike to foreign ears, and which are spelled alike when they appear in foreign print. To judge by the crows’ action, it is certain that their elementary haw has at least three distinct accents to express as many different meanings: one of “all’s well,” another of “watch out,” and a third of “be off!” Moreover, the birds seem to understand these different meanings as clearly as we understand plain English; they feed quietly while haw means one thing, or spring aloft when it means another; and though you watch them a lifetime you will see nothing to indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in their minds as to the sentinel’s message.

Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the fox and many other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly, or at least a part of it which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the seacoast in winter you hear the crows hawing continually as they follow the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes on, loudly or sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless duck and eat him to the bones whenever they have a chance. Because of this dangerous propensity you would naturally expect the water-fowl [[20]]to be suspicious of the black freebooter and to be alert when they see or hear him; but no sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you learn a thing to make you respect the crow, and perhaps to make you wonder how much or how very little you know of the ways of the wood folk.

Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards especially, like to come ashore every day in a secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to rest or preen or take a quiet nap in company. It is a tempting sight to see a score or a hundred of the splendid birds in a close group, their heads mostly tucked under their wings; but it is practically impossible to stalk them, for the reason that the crows are forever ranging the shore, and a crow never passes a group of sleeping ducks without lifting his flight to take a look over the bank behind them. What his motive is no man can say; we only note that, in effect, he stands sentinel for the ducks against a common enemy, as he habitually does for his own kind. There is no escaping that keen, searching glance of his; he sees you creeping through the beach-grass or hiding behind a bush. He flings out a single haw! with warning, danger, derision in it; and now the same ducks that have heard him all day without concern spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.

He flings out a single “Haw!” and the ducks spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.

[[21]]

The crows have several other variations of the same cry, expressive of other matters, which all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but which are meaningless to human ears. When I imitate the distress-call of a young crow, for example, I can bring a flock over my head at almost any time, the only condition being that I keep well concealed. At the first glimpse of a man in hiding they sheer off, and it is seldom that I can bring them back a second time to the same spot; yet I have a companion, one who utters a call very much like mine to ordinary ears, who can bring the flock back to him even after they have seen him and suffered at his hands. More than once I have stood beside him in the woods and fired a gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the flock pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does he begin to talk crow-talk than back they come again. What he says to them that I do not or cannot say is something that only the crows understand.

It is commonly assumed that they come to such a call because they hear in it a cry for help from one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly true at times; for a help-call, especially from a cub or nestling, is a summons to which most animals and birds instinctively respond. And, strangely enough, the smaller they are the braver they seem to be. [[22]]A mother-partridge has more than once flown in my face or beaten me with her wings, while “fierce” hawks, owls and eagles have merely circled around me at a safe distance when I came near their young. In the majority of cases, however, I think that birds come to a distress-call simply because the excitement of an individual spreads to all creatures within sight or hearing, just as a crowd of men or women will become excited and rush to a common center before they know what the stir is all about.

In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary to cry like a distressed young crow to bring a flock over your head. The imitated hawing of an old crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper excitement into it. Again, on any summer day you will hear in your own yard the pip-pip of arriving or departing robins. The same call is uttered by both sexes, at all times and in all places; yet if you listen closely you must note that there is immense variety in the accent or inflection of even this simple sound. The call is clear, ringing, joyous when the robins first arrive in the spring; it is subdued when they gather for the autumn flight; it is sleepy or querulous when they stand full-fed by the nest, and most business-like when they launch themselves into flight, which is the moment when you are most sure to hear it. [[23]]A robin utters this call hundreds of times every day, in one accent or another, and neither the other robins nor their feathered neighbors seem to pay any attention to it; but when a red squirrel comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin sends forth the same pip-pip with a different intonation, then the response is instantaneous. The alarm spreads swiftly over wood and field; clamor uprises, and birds of many species come rushing in from all directions; not because they have heard that Meeko is again killing young robins (at least, it does not seem so to me), but because excitement is afoot, and they are bound to join it or find out about it before they can settle down comfortably to their own affairs.

There is an interesting way by which you may test this contagion of excitement for yourself. Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other bird neighborhood in the early morning, preferably at a season when every nest has eggs or fledglings in it; press two fingers against your lips and draw the breath sharply between them, repeating the squeaky cry as rapidly as possible. The sound has a peculiarly exciting quality even to human ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer it), and birds come to it as boys to a fire alarm. In a few moments you may have them streaming in from the four quarters of bird world, all highly [[24]]excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some innocent nest from snake or crow or squirrel. Because the response is most electric at the season when fledglings are most helpless, you are apt to think that this call of yours is mistaken by mother birds for a cry for help. That may be true; but be not too sure about it. The fledglings themselves will come almost as readily to the call when the nesting season is over and gone.

I have tried that same exciting summons in many places, wild or settled, and commonly but not invariably with the same result, as if it were a word from the universal bird language. Once in a secluded valley of northern Italy I saw a hunter with his gun, and promptly forgot my own errand in order to chum with him and find out what he had learned of the wood folk. He was hunting birds to eat. “Those birds there!” he said, pointing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, but which seemed pitifully small game to me. Presently I learned that he could not shoot flying, and was having such bad luck that, he said, the devil surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling, companionable loafer, and for a time I tagged after him, watching him amusedly as he made careful but vain stalks of little birds that seemed to have been made wild by much hunting. In a spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also [[25]]to test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the hunter to hide with me in a thicket while I gave the call which had so often brought the feathered folk of my own New England woods. At my cry a wisp of birds whirled in to light at the edge of the covert; the Italian’s gun roared; and then I discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.

I have since had many an uncomfortable moment at the thought of how many lovely songsters may have paid with their lives for that ungodly experiment; for my companion hailed me as a master Nimrod from the New World; and when I refused, on the plea of bad luck, to teach him the call, I heard him give a distressingly good imitation of it. Yet the experiment seemed to prove that everywhere birds quickly catch the contagion of excitement; that in many cases they respond to a call because it stirs their anger or curiosity rather than because it conveys any definite summons for help or warning of danger.

When you open your ears among the beasts you hear precisely the same story; that is, certain cries apparently have definite meaning, like the accented haw of a crow, while others convey and also spread a wild emotion. Of all beasts, the wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most intelligent, and these seem to have definite calls for food or help or hunting or assembly. Such calls are [[26]]strictly tribal, I think, like the dialects of Indians, since the call of a coyote is quite different from the call of a timber wolf even when both intend to convey the same meaning. A friend of mine, an excellent mimic, who spent many years in the West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after drawing them within range by sending forth the food-call in winter; but though he knows also the food-call of the timber wolf, he has never once deceived these larger brutes by his imitation of it; nor has he ever seen a wolf of one species respond to the food or hunting call of another.

Like most other wild animals, timid or savage, the sensitive wolves all respond, but much more warily than the birds, to almost any inarticulate cry expressive of emotional excitement; just as your dog, who is yesterday’s wolf, grows uneasy when you whine in your nose like a distressed puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or window, when a wild ki-yi breaks out in the distance. Indeed, it is easier to keep a boy from a fire than a dog from a crowd or excitement of any kind; and the same is true of their wild relatives, though the wariness of the latter keeps them hidden where you cannot follow their action. The greatest commotion I ever witnessed in a timber-wolf pack was occasioned by the moaning howl of a wounded wolf on a frozen lake in midwinter. [[27]]It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever recorded up to that time, and every time they heard it the grim beasts ran wildly here and there, howling like lunatics. Then, when the wounded one grew quiet, they would approach and sniff him all over; after which some would sit on their tails and watch him closely, while others circled about on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search of a lost trail.

Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny brutes near me in the North, I have tried to call them or make them answer by giving what seemed to me a very good imitation of their cries; but seldom has a howl of mine been returned. On the contrary, the brutes almost always stop their howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if they were listening and saying, “What under the moon is that now?” Then old Tomah, the Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl exactly like mine, but with something in it which I cannot fathom or master, and instantly from the snow-filled woods comes back the wild wolf answer.

Likewise, I have called moose in many different localities, and am persuaded that it makes very little difference what kind of whine or grunt or bellow you utter, since anything resembling a moose-call will do the trick if you know how to [[28]]put the proper feeling into your voice. After listening carefully to many callers, I note this characteristic difference: that one man invariably makes the game wary, suspicious, fearful, no matter how finely he calls; while another in the same place, with the same trumpet and apparently with the same call, manages to put something into his voice, something primal, emotional and essentially animal, which brings a bull moose hurriedly to investigate. Thus it happens that the worst caller I ever heard—worst in that he had no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose habits, and uttered a blatant, monstrous roar unlike anything a sane man ever heard in the heavens above or the earth beneath—was still the most successful in getting his game into the open. Three nights in succession I heard him call in a region where moose were over-shy from much hunting, and where my own imitation of the animal’s natural voice brought small response. In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all that were within hearing, I think; and every one of the great brutes threw caution to the dogs and came out on the jump.

From such observations, and from others which I have not chronicled, I judge that the higher orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which stand for definite things, or mental images of [[29]]things, but that their ordinary cries merely project an emotion or excitement in such a way that it stirs a similar emotion in other birds or beasts of the same species; just as the sound of hearty laughter invariably stirs the feeling of mirth in men who hear it, or any inarticulate cry of fear sets human feet in motion—toward the cry if the hearer be brave, or away from it if he be of cowardly disposition. Yet even among men, who by civilization have lost some of their natural virtues, the primal impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the raccoon, the man’s first impulse is to rush to his distressed or excited fellows. If he turns and runs the other way, it means simply that his artificial habit or training has deadened his natural instincts.

In speaking of “man” here I refer to the genus homo, not to the male specimen thereof. Among brutes most of the natural instincts are the same in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind, and the instincts of the female are commonly the stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed, or think I have noticed, this difference: when a cry of distress is uttered in the woods, the first bird or beast to appear is almost always a female; but the male is quicker on his toes at a battle-yell or a senseless clamor.

This last is a personal impression, and cannot well be verified. The only record I have which [[30]]might pass for evidence in the matter comes from my observation of the crows. In the spring many of these questionable birds indulge their taste for eggs or tender flesh and soon become incurable nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot them, to save other and more useful birds. The method is very simple: one hides and calls, and takes the crows as they appear in swift flight, the number shot being commonly limited to one or two at a time. And I have observed repeatedly, at different times and in different localities, that when I use the distress-call of a young crow as a decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a female. This is the common rule, with occasional exceptions to point or emphasize it. But whenever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an owl, or send forth a senselessly excited hawing, almost invariably the first crow to come whooping over is a long-winged and glossy old male.

Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity on my part to kill crows in this fashion? Perhaps it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame the crows for their taste in eggs or nestlings; but one must note that they destroy an enormous number of insectivorous birds, and that the harm they do in this respect outweighs their usefulness in destroying field-mice and beetles. I write this [[31]]with regret; for I admire the crow, and consider him as, of all birds, the most intelligent and the most considerate of his own kind. I know that it is a moot question whether the crow does more harm or good, and that some naturalists have settled it in his favor; but I have too often caught him plundering nests in the springtime to be much impressed by his alleged usefulness at other seasons. I think that he may have been once useful in preserving the so-called balance of nature; but that balance is now dangerously unequal. The crow has flourished even in well-settled regions, thanks to his superior wit, while other useful birds have fearfully diminished, and this at a time when our orchards and gardens call more and more insistently for their help. Because of his disproportionate numbers the crow now appears to me, like our destructive and useless cats, as a positive menace in a country where he once occupied a modest or inconspicuous place—such a place as he still occupies in the wilderness, where I meet him but rarely, and where I am glad to leave him in peace, since he does not seriously interfere with his more beautiful or more useful neighbors. But we are wandering from the dim trail of animal communication, which we set out to follow.

The inarticulate but variously accented cries of which we have spoken constitute the only animal [[32]]language to which our naturalists have thus far paid any attention; and doubtless some of them would object to the use of the word “language” in such a connection. In all matters of real natural history, however (real, that is, in the sense of dealing at first hand with individual birds or beasts), I am much more inclined to listen to old Tomah, who says, when I ask him whether animals can talk: “Talk? Course he kin talk! Eve’ting talk in hees own way. Hear me now make-um dat young owl talk.” And, stepping outside the circle of camp-fire light, Tomah utters a hoot, which is answered at a distance every time he tries it. After parleying with the stranger in this tentative fashion, Tomah sends forth a different call; and immediately, as if in ready acceptance of an invitation, a barred owl glides like a gray shadow into a tree over our heads. I have heard that same old Indian use horned-owl talk, wolf and beaver and woodpecker talk, and several other dialects of the wood folk, in the same fascinating and convincing way.

One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the day or night have their meaning, if only one knows how to hear them; yet they constitute but a part, and probably a very small part, of the animal’s habitual communication with his fellows. The bulk of it appears to be of that silent kind which [[33]]passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have reason to believe, is the common language of the whole animal kingdom.

To prove such a matter is plainly impossible. Even to investigate it frankly is to enter a shadowy realm between the conscious and subconscious states, where no process can be precisely followed, and where the liability to error is always present. Let us therefore begin on familiar ground by examining certain phenomena which we cannot explain, to be sure, but which have been observed frequently enough to give us confidence that we are dealing with realities. I refer especially to that curious warning or “feeling” of impending danger, which is supposed (erroneously, I think) to depend upon the so-called sixth sense of animals and men.

[[34]]

[[Contents]]

III

Chumfo, the Super-sense

For the word chumfo I am indebted to a tribe of savages living near Lake Mweru, in Africa, and am grateful to them not only for naming a thing which has no name in any civilized language, but also for an explanation of its function in the animal economy. We shall come to the definition of the word presently, after we have some clear notion of the thing for which the word stands. As Thomas à Kempis says, if I remember correctly, “It is better to feel compassion than to know how to define it.”

By way of approach to our subject, let it be understood that chumfo refers in a general way to the animal’s extraordinary powers of sense perception, [[35]]which I would call his “sensibility” had not our novelists bedeviled that good word by making it the symbol of a false or artificial emotionalism. Every wild creature is finely “sensible” in the true meaning of the word, his sensitiveness being due to the fact that there is nothing dead or even asleep in nature; the natural animal or the natural man is from head to foot wholly alive and awake. And this because every atom of him, or every cell, as a biologist might insist, is of itself sentient and has the faculty of perception. Not till you understand that first principle of chumfo will your natural history be more than a dry husk, a thing of books or museums or stuffed skins or Latin names, from which all living interest has departed.

I am sometimes asked, “What is the most interesting thing you find in the woods?” the question calling, no doubt, for the name of some bird or beast or animal habit that may challenge our ignorance or stir our wonder. The answer is, that whether you search the wood or the city or the universe, the only interesting thing you will ever find anywhere is the thrill and mystery of awakening life. That the animal is alive, and alive in a way you ought to be but are not, is the last and most fascinating discovery you are likely to make in nature’s kingdom. After years of intimate [[36]]observation, I can hardly meet a wild bird or beast even now without renewed wonder at his aliveness, his instant response to every delicate impression, as if each moment brought a new message from earth or heaven and he must not miss it or the consequent enjoyment of his own sensations. The very sleep of an animal, when he seems ever on the thin edge of waking, when he is still so in touch with his changing world that the slightest strange sound or smell or vibration brings him to his feet with every sense alert and every muscle ready,—all this is an occasion of marvel to dull men, who must be called twice to breakfast, or who meet the violent clamor of an alarm-clock with the drowsy refrain:

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber,

A little more folding of the hands to sleep!

You will better understand what I mean by the animal’s aliveness, his uncloying pleasure in the sensation of living, if you can forget any tragical theories or prejudices of animal life which you have chanced to read, and then frankly observe the first untrammeled creature you meet in the outdoor world. Here at your back door, for example, is a flock of birds that come trooping from the snowy woods to your winter feast of crumbs. See how they dart hither and yon between mouthfuls, [[37]]as if living creatures could not be still or content with any one thing, even a good thing, in a world of endless variety. Look again, more closely, and see how they merely taste of the abundance on your table, and straightway leave it for a morsel that the wind blows from under their beaks, and that they are bound to have if it takes all winter. Every other minute they flit to a branch above the table, look about alertly, measure the world once more, make sure of the dog that he is asleep, and of the sky that it holds no hawk; then they wipe their bills carefully, using a twig for a napkin, and down to the table they go to begin all over again. So every bite is for them a feast renewed, a feast with all the spices of the new, the fresh, the unexpected and the adventurous in it.

Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote from men, here is a deer slipping shadow-like through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and keeping tabs on every living or moving or growing thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems to float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, listening, testing the air-smells as one would appreciate a varied landscape, playing Columbus to every nook or brush-pile and finding in it something that no explorer ever found before. Such is [[38]]the natural way of a fox, which makes a devious trail because so many different odors attract him here or there.

In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to understand the singing lines from “Saul”:

How good is man’s life, the mere living, how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

It is to understand also the spirit of Browning, who is hardly a world poet, to be sure, but who has the distinction of being the only famous poet who is always alive and awake. Homer nods; Dante despairs and mourns; Shakespeare has a long period of gloom when he can write only terrible tragedies of human failure; other great poets have their weary days or melancholy hours, but Browning sings ever a song of abounding life. Even his last, the Epilogue to “Asolando,” is not a swan-song, like Tennyson’s; it is rather a bugle-call, and it sounds not the “taps” of earth, but the “reveille” of immortality. But we are wandering from our woodsy trail.

Those who make an ornithology of mere feathers, or who imagine they know an animal because they know what the scientists have said about him, see in this instant responsiveness of the wild creature only a manifestation of fear, and almost every book of birds or beasts repeats the story [[39]]of terror and tragedy. Yet every writer of such books probably owns a dog that displays in less degree (because he is less alive) every single symptom of the wild creature, including his alleged fears; and the dog, far from leading a tragic or terror-governed life, is hilariously disposed to make an adventure or a picnic of every new excursion afield. Moreover, if one of these portrayers of animal fears or tragedies has ever had an adventure of his own; if he has penetrated a wild region on tiptoe, or run the white rapids in a canoe, or heard the wind sing in his ears on a breakneck gallop across country, or trailed a bear to his covert, or hunted bandits in the open, or followed the bugles when they blew for war,—then he must know well that these unforgetable moments, when a man’s senses all awaken and his nerves tingle and he treads the earth like a buck in spring, are the only times in a man’s dull life when he feels himself wholly alive and a man. That a naturalist should forget this when he sees an alert wild animal, and deny his dog and his own experience of life by confounding alertness with fear, is probably due not so much to his own blindness as to his borrowed notions, such as the “struggle for existence,” the “reign of terror,” and other hallucinations which have been packed into his head in the name of science or natural history. [[40]]

Just to take a walk with your dog may be a revelation to you, as most simple matters are when you dare to view them for yourself without prejudice. In fact, what is any revelation or discovery but seeing things as they are? This daily walk over familiar ground, which bores you because you must take it for exercise, leaving out of it the fun which is the essential element of any exercise, is to your dog another joyous and expectant exploration of the Indes. He explored the same ground yesterday, to be sure, but all sorts of revolutions and migrations take place overnight; and if he be a real dog, not a spoiled pet, he will uncover more surprises on the familiar road than you uncover in the morning newspaper. Follow him sympathetically as he finds endlessly interesting things where you find little but boredom, and you may learn that there are three marked differences between you and a normal animal: first, that he keeps the spirit of play, which you have well-nigh lost; second, that he lives in his sensations and is happy, while you dwell mostly in your thoughts and postpone happiness for the future; and third, that he is alive now, every moment, and you used to be alive the day before yesterday.

In all this you are simply typical of our unnatural civilization, which begins to enumerate or [[41]]describe us as so many thousand “souls,” doubtless because every single body of us is moribund or asleep. Consider our noses, for example. They are the seat of a wonderful faculty, more dependable than sight or hearing; they are capable of giving us sensations more varied than those of color, and almost as enjoyable as those of harmony; they can be easily trained so as to recognize every tree and plant and growing thing by its delicate fragrance; they would add greatly to our safety and convenience, as well as to our enjoyment, did we use them as nature intended; yet so thoroughly neglected are they, as a rule, that it takes a burning rag or a jet of escaping coal-gas to rouse them to the immense and varied world of odors in which an animal lives continually.

At present I am the alleged owner of a young setter, Rab, who has reached the stage of development when he thinks he owns me. For after you have properly trained a dog, there comes a brief time when he discovers with joy that he can make you do things for him; and then he is like a child who discovers that he can make you talk (that is, show some sign of life) by asking you questions. And this young setter has, I am convinced, a very low opinion of human aliveness, since there is never a day when he does not give me a hint that he considers me a poor cripple—[[42]]excepting, perhaps, the rare days when I take him woodcock-hunting, when he mildly approves of me.

One night, after waiting a long time at my feet till I should become animate, Rab followed me hopefully into the dark kitchen, where he had never before been allowed to go. I heard his steps behind me only as far as the door, and thought he was afraid to enter; but when I turned on the light, there he stood in the doorway, “frozen” into a beautiful point, his head upturned to a bell and battery on the wall. Presently a mouse hopped from the battery into a waste-basket on the floor, and Rab pointed the thing stanchly, his whole body quivering with delight when a faint odor stole to his nostrils or a rustle of paper to his ears. From the basket the mouse streaked to the coal-hod, and Rab pointed that, too, and then a crack under a door, and a yawning closet drawer. “My bones!” he said, trying to claw the drawer open. “This is a good place; something is alive here!” Then he came over and sat in front of me, looking up in my face, his head twisted sideways, to demand why I had so long kept him out of the only part of the house that was not wholly dormant.

Though the adventure was twelve months ago, “age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety,” for every night Rab comes to me [[43]]where I am reading, nudges my elbow, paws my book, sits in front of me to yawn hugely, gives me no peace, in short, till I follow him to the kitchen for another go at the waste-basket, the coal-hod and all the closet drawers. It is of no avail to leave the doors open; he will not go unless I join him in the enjoyment of something that lives. A short time since we flushed another mouse in the cellar, whither he followed me to look after the furnace; and now he pesters me by day as well as by night whenever he finds me, as he thinks, wrapped in unmanly lethargy.

With all his vivacity this young setter, who seems so alert among mere men, becomes a dull creature the moment you compare him with his wild kindred. He cannot begin to interpret the world through his senses as they instantly interpret it, and he would starve to death where they live on the fat of the land. Once on a forest trail I came upon him pointing stanchly at the edge of a little opening that lumbermen had made for yarding logs. Just across the opening, where a jumper road joined the yard, stood a noble buck, and he was “pointing,” too, for he was face to face with such a creature as he had never before seen. Both animals were like statues, so motionless did they stand; but there was this difference, that the dog rested solidly on earth and might have been [[44]]carved from marble, while the buck seemed to rest on air and to be compounded of some ethereal essence. His eyes fairly radiated light and color. The velvet on his antlers seemed to grow as I looked upon it, like the velvet moss in which the fairies are said to rest. Every hair of him from nose to tail tip was gloriously alive. A moment only he stood, but long enough for me to carry a picture of him forever afterward; then he bounded up the old road, and Rab came running over to ask me what new thing he had discovered.

This marvelous alertness of the natural animal is commonly attributed to the fact that his physical senses are more acute than ours; but that is true only of some particular sense of a certain creature. The wolf’s nose, the deer’s ear, the vulture’s eye,—these are probably keener than any similar human organ; but, on the other hand, a man’s eye is very much keener for details than the eye of wolf or deer; his senses of touch and taste are finer than anything to be found among the lower orders, and the average of his five senses is probably the highest upon earth. Yet the animal is more responsive to impressions of the external world, and this is due, I think, to the fact that he lives more in his sensations; that he is not cumbered, as we are, by inner phenomena; that he is free from pain, care, fear, regret, anxiety and [[45]]other mental complexities; that he is accustomed to hear (that is, to receive vibrations) through his feet or his skin quite as much as through his ears; and that his whole body, relaxed and at ease, often becomes a first-class receiving instrument for what we call sense impressions.

As an example of this last, note the wild creature’s response to every change of air pressure, a response so immediate and certain that one might accurately forestall the barometer by observing the action of birds, or even of chickens, which anticipate a storm long before your face has noted the moist wind or your eye the rain-cloud. In the winter woods I have often seen a deer feeding greedily (quite at variance with his usual dainty tasting) at an hour long before or long after his accustomed time, and as I traveled wider I would find other deer doing the same thing. I used to wonder at this, till I noticed that such unusual action was always followed by a storm—not an ordinary brief snowfall, to which deer pay little attention beyond seeking shelter while it lasts, but a severe storm or blizzard, during which most animals lie quiet for a whole day, or even two or three days, without stirring abroad for food.

Whether an element of forethought enters into this act of “stuffing” themselves before a storm, or whether it is wholly instinctive, like the bear’s [[46]]change of diet before he dens for his winter sleep, is a question which does not concern us, since nobody can answer it. In either case the deer have felt, as surely as our most sensitive instruments, not only the decreasing pressure of the air but also its increasing moisture.

That such sensitiveness is not of any one organ, but rather of the whole body, becomes more evident when we study the lower orders—fishes, for example, which may winter under a dozen fathoms of water and a two-foot blanket of ice, but which nevertheless respond to the changing air currents far above their heads. Once on a northern lake, in March, I kept tabs on some trout for fourteen consecutive days, and it seemed that they moved from deep to shallow water or back again whenever the wind veered to the proper quarter. I had a water-hole cut in the thick ice, and, finding a trout under it one day, I kept a couple of lines with minnows there constantly. The hole was in a shallow place, over a sandy bottom, and by putting my face to the opening, with a blanket over my head to exclude the upper light, I could dimly see the shadows move in from deep water. On six scattering days, when the wind came light or strong from the south, two of the days bringing snow, the trout evidently moved shoreward, since I caught them abundantly, as many as I needed [[47]]and some to spare; but on the other eight days, some clear and some stormy, when the wind was north of east or west, not a trout was seen or caught, and only once was a minnow of mine missing.

It may be said that the trout simply followed their food-supply; but I doubt this, since trout apparently feed very little in winter; and in formulating any theory of the matter one must account for the fact that big fish or little fish moved shoreward whenever the wind blew south. The phenomenon may appear less foreign to our experience, though not less mysterious to our reason, if we remember that an old wound or a corn may by its aching foretell a storm, or that a person suffering from nervous prostration may by his sudden depression know that the barometer will soon be falling.

The same bodily sensitiveness appears unchanged in our domestic animals. I once saw a deer and her two fawns kneel down in the woods, and watched them in astonishment as they rested for some time on their knees, as if in supplication; then the ground rocked under me, and I knew that their feet had felt the tremor of an earthquake long before I was sensible of it. Such an observation seemed wonderful to me till I learned that our sheep are equally sensitive in their [[48]]elastic hoofs, and that our pigs respond not only to vibration of earth or air, but also to some finer vibration set in motion, apparently, by human excitement.

Moreover, I have known one dog, old and half deaf, that, whether asleep or awake, would respond to the faint tremor of his master’s automobile before it came into sight or hearing. And what there is in the tremor of one machine to distinguish it from another of the same make and power is something that the unaided ear can hardly measure. The dog lived under a hilltop, on a highway over which scores of automobiles passed daily; and on holidays, when his master was at home, the scores would increase to hundreds. He would sleep for hours on the veranda, paying no heed to the noise or smell or dust of the outrageous things, till suddenly he would jump up, bark, and start for the gate; and in a moment or two we would see the master’s auto rise into sight over the brow of the hill.

The instant response of deer or dog to minute external impressions, though startling enough, is probably wholly physical, a matter of vibrations on one side and of nerves on the other; but there are other phenomena of sensitiveness (and these bring us nearer to our trail of animal communication) [[49]]for which it is much harder to find a satisfactory physical explanation. Such is the feeling or warning of unsensed danger, or the premonition that some one unseen and unheard is approaching—a phenomenon which seems to be common among animals, to judge from repeated observation, and which appears often enough in human beings to make not only the inquisitive Society for Psychical Research but almost every thoughtful man or woman take some note of it.

For example, a man awake in his bed sees his son, whom he thinks safely ashore in a foreign country, fall overboard from a steamer to his death, at the very hour when the son did fall overboard, as was afterward learned. Or a woman, the wife of a sea-captain, sitting on the veranda at home in the bright moonlight, sees the familiar earth vanish in a world of water, and looks suddenly upon her husband’s ship as it reels to the gale, turns over to the very edge of destruction, and then rights itself with half its crew swept overboard—and all this while the precise event befell a thousand miles away. Such things, which spell a different kind of sensitiveness from that with which we are familiar, have happened to people well known to me; but as they have happened to others also, and as almost every town or village has a convincing example of its own, I [[50]]forbear details and accept the fact, and try here to view or understand it as a natural phenomenon.

At first you may strongly object even to my premise, calling it incredible that sense-bound mortals should feel a danger that their eyes cannot see or their ears hear; but there are at least two reasonable answers to your objection. In the first place, we are sense-bound only in the sense of limiting ourselves unnecessarily, confining our perception to five habitual modes, shamefully neglecting to cultivate even these, and ignoring the use or the existence of other and perhaps finer means of contact with the external world. Again, it is not a whit more incredible that sensitive creatures, whether brute or human, should feel the coming or going of a person than that they should feel his look or glance, as they certainly do.

This last is no cloudy theory; it is a plain fact which endures the test of observation. Almost any man of strong personality can disturb or awaken a sleeping wild animal simply by looking at him intently; and the nearer the man is the more certain the effect of his gaze on the sleeping brute. The same is true in less degree of most Indians and woodsmen, and of many sensitive women and children, as you may prove for yourself. Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person is taking a nap—not sleeping [[51]]heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly, naturally, as all wild animals take their rest. Make no noise, but stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the sleeper’s face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the head or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he feels your look and is trying subconsciously to avoid it. The awakening, whether of animals or of men, does not always follow our look, most fortunately, but it happens frequently enough under varying conditions to put the explanation of chance entirely out of the question.

When I was a child I used to sit long hours in the woods alone, partly for love of the breathing solitude, and partly for getting acquainted with wild birds or beasts, which showed no fear of me when they found me quiet. At such times I often found within myself an impression which I expressed in the words, “Something is watching you.” Again and again, when nothing stirred in my sight, that curious warning would come; and almost invariably, on looking around, I would find some bird or fox or squirrel which had probably caught a slight motion of my head and had halted his roaming to creep near and watch me inquisitively. As I grew older the “feel” of living things grew dimmer; yet many times in later years, when [[52]]I have been in the wilderness alone, I have experienced the same impression of being watched or followed, and so often has it proved a true warning that I still trust it and act upon it, even when my eyes see nothing unusual and my ears hear nothing but their own ringing in the silence.

I remember once, when I was sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, that I began to have an increasing impression that some living thing unseen was near me. At first I neglected it, for I had my eyes on a deer that interested me greatly; but the feeling grew stronger till I obeyed it and rose to my feet. At the first motion came a startling woof! and from some bushes close behind me a bear jumped away for the woods. No doubt he had been there some time, watching me or creeping nearer, knowing that I was alive, but completely puzzled by my shapelessness and lack of action. A similar thing has happened several times, in other places and with other animals, and always at a moment when I was most in harmony with the environment and a sharer of its deep tranquillity.[1]

As a child this faculty (if such it be) was as natural as anything else in life; for in childhood we take the world as we find it in personal experience, and nothing is especially wonderful [[53]]where all is wonder. I then thought no more of feeling the presence of an animal than of hearing him walk when I could not see him; but as I grew older the experience seemed a little odd or “queer,” and I never spoke of it to any one till I discovered, first, that the faculty seems to be common among animals, and second, that some Indians (not all) have it and regard it as the most natural thing in the world. Here is how the latter discovery came about:

Simmo and I were calling moose from a lake one moonlit night, with a silent canoe under us, dark evergreen woods at our back, and a little ghost of a beaver-meadow, vague, misty, shadow-filled, immediately before our eyes yet seeming as remote as any drifting cloud. To our repeated call no answer was returned; then we allowed the canoe to drift ashore where it would, and sat listening to the vast silence. I was brought back from my absorption in the fragrance, the harmony, the infinite stillness of the night by feeling the canoe shake and hearing Simmo whisper, “Somet’ing near. Look out!”

Now in a silence like that, the tense, living silence of the wilderness at night, one’s ears are as full of tricks as a puckwudgie, who is one of the mischievous fairy-folk of the Indians. The whine of a mosquito sounds across the whole lake; or [[54]]the mutter of a frog becomes like the roar of a bull of Bashan; or suddenly you begin to hear music as the faint vibration of some dry stub, purring in the unfelt air currents, turns to the booming of a mighty church organ. At such a time, unless one has trained his senses to ignore the obvious (the Indian secret of seeing and hearing things), one soon becomes confused, uncertain of the borderland between the real and the imaginary; so presently I turned to Simmo and whispered, “You hear him?”

The Indian shook his head. “No hear-um; just feel-um,” he said; and again we settled down to watch. For several minutes we questioned the woods, the lake, the meadow; but nothing stirred, not a sound broke the painful quiet, the while we both felt strongly that some living thing was near us. Then a shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned root, only a few yards away, and a great bull stood alert on the open shore.

I thought then, and I still think, that besides our ordinary five senses we have a finer faculty which I must call, for lack of a better term, the sense of presence; and I explain it on the assumption that every life recognizes and attracts every other life by some occult force, as dead matter (if there be such a thing) attracts all other matter by the mysterious force of gravitation.

A shadow moved from the darker shadow of an upturned root—and a great buck stood alert on the open shore.

[[55]]

Doubtless I have been many times watched in the woods when I did not know or feel it; and certainly I have often had my eyes upon an unconscious bird or beast when, though I fancied he grew uneasy under my scrutiny, he did not have enough sense of danger to run away—possibly because no real danger threatened him, the eyes that looked upon him being friendly or merely curious.

Once on a hardwood ridge I came upon a buck lying asleep in open timber, and stood with my back against a great sugar-maple, observing him for five or six minutes before he stirred. No, I was not trying to awaken him by a look, or to stage any other experiment. I was simply enjoying a rare sight, noting with immense interest that this wild creature, whom I had always seen so splendidly alert, could nod and blink like any ordinary mortal. So near was he that I could mark the drowsiness of his eyes, the position of his feet, the swelling of his sides as he breathed. I happened to be counting his respirations in friendly fashion, comparing them with my own, when suddenly his head turned to me; his eyes snapped wide open, and they were looking straight into mine. Apparently his feeling or subconscious perception had warned him where danger was; but still his eyes could not recognize it, standing there [[56]]in plain sight. For to stand motionless without concealment is often the best way to deceive a wild animal, which habitually associates life with motion.

No more drowsiness for that buck! He was startled, plainly enough; but he rose to his feet very stealthily, not stirring a leaf, and stood at tense attention. When he turned his head to look over his shoulder behind him I raised my field-glass, for I wanted to read his thought, if possible, in his eyes. As he turned his gaze my way again his nose seemed to sweep my face. It rested there a moment full on the lens of my glass, moved on, and returned for a longer inspection. Then he glided past, still without recognizing me, testing the air at every springy step, harking this way, looking that way, and disappearing at last as if he trod on eggs.

From such experiences I judge that the feeling of unsensed danger, or the more subtle feel of a living thing, is as variable in the animals as are their instincts or their social habits. It may be dull in one creature and keen in another of the same species, or alternately awake and asleep in the same creature; but there is no longer any doubt in my mind that it is a widespread gift among birds and beasts. When it appears occasionally among men, therefore, it is to be regarded [[57]]not as uncanny or queer, but, like the sure sense of direction which a few men possess, as a precious and perfectly natural inheritance from our primitive ancestors. That it skips a dozen generations to alight on an odd man here or there, like a storm-driven bird on a ship at sea, is precisely what we might expect of heredity, which follows a course that seems to us erratic or at times marvelous, as geometry appears to an Eskimo, because we do not yet understand its law or working principle.

Among savage tribes, who live a natural outdoor life in close contact with nature, the perception of danger or of persons beyond the ordinary sense range is much more common than among civilized folk. Almost every explorer and missionary who has spent much time with African natives, for example, has noticed that the Blacks have some mysterious means of knowing when a stranger is approaching one of their villages—mysterious, that is, because it does not depend on runners or messengers or any other of our habitual means of communication. A recent observer of these people has at last offered an explanation of the matter, with many other impressions of native philosophy, in a work to which he gives the suggestive title of Thinking Black. Of the scores of books on Africa which I have read, [[58]]this is the only one to show more than a very superficial knowledge of the natives, and the reason is apparent. The author thinks, most reasonably, that you cannot possibly know the native or understand his customs until you know his thought, and that the only trail to his thought is through the language in which the thought is expressed. Therefore did he study the speech as a means of knowing the man; and herein he is in refreshing contrast to other African travelers and hunters I have read, who spend a few months or weeks in a white man’s camp, knowing the natives about as intimately as lovers know the moon, and then babble of native customs or beliefs or “superstitions,”—as if any rite or habit could be understood without first understanding the philosophy of life from which it sprang, as a flower from a hidden seed.

This rare observer, who knows how the native thinks because he perfectly understands the native language, tells us[2] that the Blacks clearly recognize the power of animals and of normal men to know many things beyond their sense range; that they give it a definite name, and explain it in a way which indicates an astonishing degree of abstract thought on the part of those whom we ignorantly call unthinking savages. [[59]]According to these natives, every natural animal, man included, has the physical gifts of touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and chumfo. I must still use the native term because it cannot be translated, because it implies all that we mean by instinct, intuitive or absolute knowledge and (a thing which no other psychology has even hinted at) the process by which such knowledge is acquired.

This chumfo is not a sixth or extra sense, as we assume, but rather the unity or perfect co-ordination of the five senses at their highest point. I may illustrate the matter this way, still following Crawford, whose record contains many curious bits of observation, savage philosophy, woods lore and animal lore, many of them written by the camp-fire and all jumbled together pell-mell:

For ordinary perception at near distances the eye or the ear is sufficient, and while engaged in any near or obvious matter the five senses work independently, each busy with its own function. But when such observation is ended or at fault, and the man retreats, as it were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge and harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. (Here, in native dress, is nothing more or less than the psychologist’s subconscious self, with its mysterious working.) At such moments the whole [[60]]animal or the whole man, not his brain and senses alone, becomes sensitive to the most delicate impressions, to inaudible sounds or vibrations, to unseen colors, to unsmelled odors or intangible qualities,—to a multitude of subtle messages from the external world, which are ordinarily unnoticed because the senses are ordinarily separate, each occupied with its particular message. So when a sleeping animal is suddenly aware that he must be alert, he does not learn of approaching danger through his ears or nose, but through chumfo, through the perfect co-ordination of all his senses working together as one. In the same way a wandering black man always knows where his hut or camp is; he holds his course on the darkest night, finds his way through a vast jungle, goes back to any spot in it where he left something, and often astonishes African travelers by getting wind of their doings while they are yet far distant.

Such is the native philosophy; and the striking feature of it is, that it is not superstitious but keenly observant, not ignorant but rational and scientific, since it seems to anticipate our latest biological discoveries, or rather, as we shall see, a philosophy which rests upon biological science as a foundation.

Perhaps the first suggestion that the native may have reason in his theory comes from the extraordinary [[61]]sensitiveness of certain blind people, who walk confidently about a cluttered room, or who sort the family linen after it returns from the laundry. These blind people say, and think, that they avoid objects by feeling the increasing air pressure as they approach, or that they sort the family linen by smell; but it appears more likely that a greater unity and refinement of all their senses results from their living in darkness.

That our human senses have unused possibilities, or that we may possibly possess extra senses of which we are not conscious, may appear if you study the phenomenon of hearing, especially if you study it when you hear a strange sound in the woods or in the house at night. It is assumed that we always locate a sound by the ear, and that we determine its volume or distance by our judgment from previous experiences; but that, I think, is a secondary and not a primary process. When we act most naturally we seem to locate a sound not by search or experiment, but instantly, instinctively, absolutely; and then by our ear or our judgment we strive to verify our first chumfo impression.

As a specific instance, you are lying half asleep at night when a faint, strange sound breaks in upon your consciousness. If you act naturally now, you will nine times out of ten locate the sound [[62]]on the instant, without bringing your “good ear” to bear upon it; but if you neglect or lose your first impression, you may hunt for an hour and go back to bed without finding the source of the disturbance. Or you are traveling along a lonely lane at night, more alive than you commonly are, when a sudden cry breaks out of the darkness. It lasts but a fraction of a second and is gone; yet in that fleeting instant you have learned three things: you know the direction of the cry; you know, though you never heard it before, whether it is a loud cry from a distance or a faint cry from near at hand; and you are so sure of its exact location that you go to a certain spot, whether near or far, and say, “That cry sounded here.”

So much if you act naturally; but if you depend on your ears or judgment, as men are apt to do, then you are in for a long chase before you locate the cry of a bird or a beast or a lost child in the night.

It is easy to make mistakes here, for we are so cumbered by artificial habits that it is difficult to follow any purely natural process; but our trail becomes clearer when we study the matter of hearing among the brutes. Thus, your dog is lying asleep by the fire when a faint noise or footstep sounds outside. Sometimes, indeed, there is no audible sound at all when he springs to his feet; [[63]]but no sooner is the door opened for him than he is around the house and away, heading as straight for the disturbance as if he knew, as he probably does, exactly where to find it. Yet your dog is, I repeat, a very dull creature in comparison with his wild kindred. Their ability to locate a sound is almost unbelievable, not because they have more delicate ears (for the human ear is much finer, being sensitive to a thousand inflections, tones, harmonies, which are meaningless to the brute), but because of what the Blacks call their better chumfo or what we thoughtlessly call their stronger instincts.

This has been strongly impressed upon me at times when I have tried to call a moose in the wilderness. If you seek these animals far back where they are never hunted—a difficult matter nowadays—the bulls answer readily enough, or sometimes too readily, as when one big brute chased me to my canoe and gave me a hatless run for it; but in a much-hunted region they are very shy and come warily to a call. The best way to see them in such a place is to call a few times at night, or until you get an answer, and then go quickly away before the bull comes near enough to begin circling suspiciously. At daybreak you are very apt to find him waiting; and the astonishing thing is that he is waiting at the very spot where you used your trumpet. [[64]]

The place you select for calling may be a tiny bog in a vast forest, or a little, nameless beaver-meadow by a lake or river. It is like many other such places, near or far, and the bull may come from a distance, crossing lakes, rivers, bogs and dense forest on his way; but he never seems to make a mistake or to be at a loss in locating the call. On a still night I have heard a bull answer me from a mountain five or six miles away; yet in the morning there he was, waiting expectantly for his mate near the bit of open shore where I had called him; and to reach that spot he must either have crossed the lake by swimming, a distance of two miles, or else have circled it on a wide détour. That he should come such a distance through woods and waters, and pick the right spot from a hundred others on either side, seems to me not a matter of ears or experience but of chumfo, or absolute knowledge.

Another and more interesting verification of the chumfo philosophy is open to any man who will go quietly through the big woods by moonlight, putting himself back amid primal or animal conditions, and observing himself closely as he does so. The man who has not traveled the wilderness alone at night has a vivid and illuminating experience awaiting him. He is amazed, so soon as he overcomes the first unnatural feeling of fear, to find [[65]]how alive he is, and how much better he can hear and smell than ever he dreamed. At such a time one’s whole body seems to become a delicately poised instrument for receiving sense impressions, and one’s skin especially begins to tingle and creep as it wakes from its long sleep. Nor is this “creeping” of the skin strange or queer, as we assume, but perfectly natural. The sensations which we now ignorantly associate with fear of the dark (a late and purely human development; the animal knows it not) are in reality the sensations of awakening life.

Possibly we may explain this supersensitiveness of the skin, when life awakens in it once more and it becomes for us another and finer instrument of perception, by the simple biological fact that every cell of the multitudes which make up the human body has a more or less complete organization within itself. Moreover, as late experiments have shown, a cell or a tissue of cells will live and prosper in a suitable environment when completely separated from the body of which it was once a part. These human cells inherit certain characteristics common to all animal cells since life began; and it is not improbable that they inherit also something of the primal cell’s sensibility, or capacity to receive impressions from the external world. This universal cell-function was largely [[66]]given over when the animal (a collection of cells) began to develop special organs of touch, sight, and hearing; but there is no indication that the original power of sensibility has ever been wholly destroyed in any cell. It is, therefore, still within the range of biological possibility that a man should hear with his fingers or smell with his toes, since every cell of both finger and toe once did a work corresponding to the present functions of the five animal senses.

Before you dismiss this as an idle or impossible theory, try a simple experiment, which may open your eyes to the reality of living things. Go to a greenhouse and select a spot of bare earth under a growing rose-bush. Examine the surface carefully, then brush and examine it again, to be sure that not a root of any kind is present. Now place a handful of good plant-food on the selected spot, and go away to your own affairs. Return in a week or so, brush aside your “bait,” and there before your eyes is a mass of white feeding-roots where no root was before. In some way, deep under the soil, the hungry cells have heard or smelled or felt a rumor of food, and have headed for it as surely as a dog follows his nose to his dinner.

Do plants, then, know what they do when they turn to the light, and is there something like consciousness [[67]]in a tree or a blade of grass? That is too much to assert, though one may think or believe so. No man can answer the question which occurs so constantly to one who lives among growing things; but you can hardly leave your simple experiment without formulating a theory that even the hidden rootlets of a rose-bush have something fundamentally akin to our highly developed sensibility. At present some biologists are beginning to assert, and confidently, though it is but an opinion, that there is no dead matter in the world; that the ultimate particles of which matter is composed are all intensely alive. And if alive, they must be sentient; that is, each must have an infinitesimal degree of feeling or sense perception.

To return from our speculation, and to illustrate the chumfo faculty from human and animal experience: I was once sitting idly on a Nantucket wharf, alternately watching some hermit-crabs scurrying about in their erratic fashion under the tide, and an old dog that lay soaking himself in the warm sunshine. Just behind us, the only inharmonious creatures in the peaceful scene, some laborers were unloading rocks from a barge by the aid of a derrick. For more than an hour, or ever since I came to the wharf, the dog lay in the same [[68]]spot, and in all that time I did not see him move a muscle. He was apparently sound asleep. Suddenly he heaved up on his rheumatic legs, sniffed the air alertly, and turned his head this way, that way, as if wary of something.

The human labor had proceeded lazily, for the day was warm; there was no change in the environment, so far as I could discern; the only sounds in the air were the sleepy lap of wavelets and the creaking of pulleys; yet my instant thought was, “That dog is frightened; but at what?” After a few moments of watching he moved off a dozen yards and threw himself flat on his side to sleep again. His body was hardly relaxed when a guy-rope parted, and the iron-bound mast of the derrick crashed down on the wharf.

It was certainly “touch and go” for me; I felt the wind of the thing as it fell, and was almost knocked off the wharf; but I was not thinking then of my own close call. With my interest at high pitch I examined the mast, and found it lying squarely athwart the impression left by the dog in the dust of the road.

“Merely a coincidence,” you say; which indicates that we are apt to think alike and in set formulas. That is precisely what I said at the time—a mere coincidence, but a startling one, which made me think of luck (a most foolish notion) [[69]]and wonder why luck should elect to light on a worthless old dog and take no heed of what seemed to me then a precious young man. But I have since changed my mind; and here is one of the many observations which made me change it.

Years afterward my Indian guide, Simmo, was camped with a white man beside a salmon river. It was a rough night, and a storm was roaring over the big woods. For shelter they had built a bark commoosie, and for comfort a fire of birch logs. At about nine o’clock they turned in, each wrapped in his blanket, and slept soundly but lightly, as woodsmen do, after a long day on the trail. Some time later—hours, probably, for the fire was low, the storm hushed, the world intensely still—the white man was awakened by a touch, and opened his eyes to find his companion in a tense, listening attitude.

“Bes’ get out of here quick, ’fore somet’ing come,” said the Indian, and threw off his blanket.

“But why—what—how do you know?” queried the white man, startled but doubting, for he had listened and heard nothing.

The Indian, angered as an Indian of the woods always is when you question or challenge his craft, made an impatient gesture. “Don’ know how; don’ know why; just know. Come!” he called sharply, and the white man followed him away [[70]]from the camp toward the river, where it was lighter. For several minutes they stood there, like two alert animals, searching the dark woods with all their senses; but nothing moved. The white man was beginning another fool question when there came a sudden dull crack, a booming of air, as a huge yellow-birch stub toppled over the fire and flattened the commoosie like a bubble.

“Dere! Das de feller mus’ be comin’,” said Simmo. “By cosh, now, nex’ time Injun tell you one t’ing, p’r’aps you believe-um!” And, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped over death-and-destruction, kicked aside some rubbish, and lay down to sleep where he was before.

“How do I explain it?” I don’t. I simply recognize a fact which I cannot explain, and which I will not blink by calling it another coincidence. For the fact is, as I judge, that a few men and many animals exercise some extra faculty which I do not or cannot exercise, or have access to some source of information which is closed to me. When I question the gifted men or women who possess this faculty, or what’s-its-name, I find that they are as much in the dark about it as I am. They know certain things without knowing how they learn; and the only word of explanation they offer is that they “feel” thus and so—perhaps as [[71]]a horse feels when he is holding the right direction through a blinding snowstorm, as he does hold it, steadily, surely, if you are wise enough not to bother him with the reins or your opinions.

Simmo is one of these rare men. At one moment he is a mere child, so guileless, so natural, so innocent of worldly wisdom, that he is forever surprising you. Once when his pipe was lost I saw him fill an imaginary bowl, scratch an imaginary match, and puff away with a look of heavenly content on his weathered face. So you treat him as an unspoiled creature, humoring him, till there is difficulty or danger ahead, or a man’s work to be done, when he steps quietly to the front as if he belonged there. Or you may be talking with him by the camp-fire, elaborating some wise theory, when he brushes aside your book knowledge as of no consequence and suddenly becomes a philosopher, proclaiming a new or startling doctrine of life in the sublimely unhampered way of Emerson, who finished off objectors by saying, “I do not argue; I know.” But where Emerson gives you a mystical word or a bare assertion which he cannot possibly prove, Simmo has a disconcerting way of establishing a challenged doctrine by a concrete and undeniable fact.

One misty day when we were astray in the wilderness, he and I, we attempted to travel by getting [[72]]our compass bearings from the topmost twigs of the evergreens, which slant mostly in one direction. After blundering around for a time without getting any nearer camp or familiar landmarks, Simmo remarked: “Dese twigs lie like devil. I guess I bes’ find-um way myself.” And he did find it, and hold it even after darkness fell, by instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have been a matter of feeling rather than of sense or observation, for his only explanation was, “Oh, w’en I goin’ right I feel good; but w’en I goin’ wrong I oneasy.”

This natural feeling or impression of things beyond the range of sight, this extra sense, or chumfo unity of all the senses, is probably akin to another feeling by which the animal or man becomes aware of distant persons, or of distant moods or emotions. The sleeping dog’s alarm beneath the weakened derrick, or the sleeping Indian’s uneasiness near the doomed birch-stub, might be explained on purely physical grounds: some tremor of parting fibers, some warning vibration too faint for eardrums but heavy enough to shake a more delicately poised nerve center, reached the inner beast or the inner man and roused him to impending danger. (There is a deal of babble in this explanation, I admit, and still a mystery at the end of it.) But when a man or a brute receives [[73]]knowledge not of matter, but of minds or spirits like his own; when a mother knows, for example, the mental state of a son who is far away, and when no material vibrations of any known medium can pass between them,—then all sixth-sense theories, which must rest on the impinging of waves upon nerve centers, no longer satisfy or explain. We are in the more shadowy region of thought transference or impulse transference, and it is in this silent, unexplored region that, as I now believe, a large part of animal communication goes on continually.

That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps more reasonable, if you follow this unblazed trail a little farther.

[[74]]

[1] For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196–199. [↑]

[2] Crawford, Thinking Black (1904). [↑]

[[Contents]]

IV

Natural Telepathy

The way of animal communication now grows dimmer and dimmer, or some readers may even think it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of Wonderland said when she found herself lengthening out like a telescope. But there is certainly a trail of some kind ahead, and since we are apt to lose it or to wander apart, let us agree, if we can, upon some familiar fact or experience which may serve as a guiding landmark. Our general course will be as follows: first, to define our subject, or rather, to make its meaning clear by illustration; second, to examine the reasonableness of telepathy from a natural or biological viewpoint; and finally, to go afield with eyes and minds open to see what [[75]]the birds or the beasts may teach us of this interesting matter.

It seems to be fairly well established that a few men and women of uncommonly fine nervous organization (which means an uncommonly natural or healthy organization) have the power of influencing the mind of another person at a distance; and this rare power goes by the name of thought transference, or telepathy. The so-called crossing of letters, when two widely separated persons sit down at the same hour to write each other on the same subject, is the most familiar but not the most convincing example of the thing. Yes, I know the power and the example are both challenged, since there are scientists who deny telepathy root and branch, as well as scientists who believe in it implicitly; but I also know something more convincing than any second-hand denial or belief, having at different times met three persons who used the “gift” so freely, and for the most part so surely, that to ignore it would be to abandon confidence in my own sense and judgment. I am not trying, therefore, to investigate an opinion, but to understand a fact.

To illustrate the matter by a personal experience: For many years after I first left home my mother would become “uneasy in her mind,” as she expressed it, whenever a slight accident or [[76]]danger or sickness had befallen me. If the event were to me serious or threatening, there was no more doubt or uneasiness on my mother’s part. She would know within the hour that I was in trouble of some kind, and would write or telegraph to ask what was the matter.

It is commonly assumed that any such power must be a little weird or uncanny; that it contradicts the wholesome experience of humanity or makes fantastic addition to its natural faculties; and I confess that the general queerness, the lack of balance, the Hottentotish credulity of folk who dabble in occult matters give some human, if not reasonable, grounds for the assumption. Nevertheless, I judge that telepathy is of itself wholly natural; that it is a survival, an age-old inheritance rather than a new invention or discovery; that it might be exercised not by a few astonishing individuals, but by any normal man or woman who should from infancy cultivate certain mental powers which we now habitually neglect. I am led to this conviction because I have found something that very much resembles telepathy in frequent use throughout the entire animal kingdom. It is, as I think and shall try to make clear, a natural gift or faculty of the animal mind, which is largely subconscious, and it is from the animal mind that we inherit it; just as a few woodsmen [[77]]inherit the animal sense of direction, and cultivate and trust it till they are sure of their way in any wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled by artificial habit, go promptly astray whenever they venture beyond beaten trails.

That the animals inherit this power of silent communication over great distances is occasionally manifest even among our half-natural domestic creatures. For example, that same old setter of mine, Don, who introduced us to our fascinating subject, was left behind most unwillingly during my terms at school; but he always seemed to know when I was on my way home. For months at a stretch he would stay about the house, obeying my mother perfectly, though she never liked a dog; but on the day I was expected he would leave the premises, paying no heed to orders, and go to a commanding ledge beside the lane, where he could overlook the highroad. Whatever the hour of my coming, whether noon or midnight, there I would find him waiting.

Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly, having sent no word of my coming, my mother missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours later, when he did not return at his dinner-time or answer her repeated call, she searched for him and found him camped expectantly in the lane. “Oho! wise dog,” said she. “I understand now. [[78]]Your master is coming home.” And without a doubt that it would soon be needed, she went and made my room ready.

If the dog had been accustomed to spend his loafing-time in the lane, one might thoughtlessly account for his action by the accident or hit-or-miss theory; but he was never seen to wait there for any length of time except on the days when I was expected. And once (unhappily the last time Don ever came to meet his master) he was observed to take up his watch within a few minutes of the hour when my train left the distant town. Apparently he knew when I headed homeward, but there was nothing in his instinct or experience to tell him how long the journey might be. So he would wait patiently, loyally, knowing I was coming, and my mother would take his dinner out to him.

In many other ways Don gave the impression, if not the evidence, that he was a “mind-reader.” He always knew when Saturday came, or a holiday, and possibly he may have associated the holiday notion with my old clothes; but how he knew what luck the day had in store for him, as he often seemed to know the instant I unsnapped his chain in the early morning, was a matter that at first greatly puzzled me. If I appeared in my old clothes and set him free with the resolution that [[79]]my day must be spent in study or tinkering or farm work, he would bid me good morning and go off soberly to explore the premises, as dogs are wont to do. But when I met him silently with the notion that the day was my day off, to be wasted in shooting or fishing or roving the countryside, then in some way Don caught the notion instantly; he would be tugging at his leash before I reached him, and no sooner was he free than he was all over the yard in mad capers or making lunatic attempts to drag me off on our common holiday before breakfast.

That any dog of mine should obey my word, doing gladly whatever I told him, was to be expected; or that in the field he should watch for a motion of my hand and follow it instantly, whether to charge or hold or come in or cast left or right, was a simple matter of training; but that this particular dog should, unknown to me, enter into my very feeling, was certainly not the result of education, and probably not of sight or sense, as we ordinarily understand the terms. When we were together of an evening before the fire, so long as I was working or pleasantly reading he would lie curled up on his own mat, without ever disturbing me till it was time for him to be put to bed, when he would remind me of the fact by nudging my elbow. But if an hour came when [[80]]I was in perplexity, or had heard bad news and was brooding over it, hardly would I be away in thought, forgetful of Don’s existence on a trail I must follow alone, when his silky head would slide under my hand, and I would find his brown eyes searching my face with something inexpressibly fine and loyal and wistful in their questioning deeps.

Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to enter into my moods by some subtle, mysterious perception for which I have no name, and no explanation save the obvious one—that a man’s will or emotion may fill a room with waves or vibration as real as those streaming from a fire or a lighted candle, and that normal animals have some unused bodily faculty for receiving precisely such messages or vibrations. But we are not yet quite ready for that part of our trail; it will come later, when we can follow it with more understanding.

Should this record seem to you too personal (I am dealing only with first-hand impressions of animal life), here is the story of another dog—not a blue-blooded or highly trained setter, but just an ordinary, doggy, neglected kind of dog—submitted by a scientific friend of mine, who very cautiously offers no explanation, but is content to observe and verify the facts: [[81]]

This second dog, Watch by name and nature, was accustomed to meet his master much as Don met me in the lane; but he did it much more frequently, and timed the meeting more accurately. He was nearer the natural animal, never having been trained in any way, and perhaps for that reason he retained more of the natural gift or faculty of receiving a message from a distance. His owner, a busy carpenter and builder, had an office in town, and was accustomed to return from his office or work at all hours, sometimes early in the afternoon, and again long after dark. At whatever hour the man turned homeward, Watch seemed to follow his movement as if by sight; he would grow uneasy, would bark to be let out if he happened to be in the house, and would trot off to meet his master about half-way. Though he was occasionally at fault, and sometimes returned to brood over the matter when his master, having started for home, was turned aside by some errand, his mistakes were decidedly exceptional rather than typical. His strange “gift” was a matter of common knowledge in the neighborhood, and occasionally a doubtful man would stage an experiment: the master would agree to mark the hour when he turned homeward, and one or more interested persons would keep tabs on the dog. So my scientific friend repeatedly [[82]]tested Watch, and observed him to take the road within a few moments of the time when his master left his office or building operations in the town, some three or four miles away.

Thus far the record is clear and straight, but there is one important matter which my friend overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when they deal with nature, their mistake being to regard animals as featureless members of a class or species rather than as individuals. The dog’s master always came or went in a wagon drawn by a quiet old horse, and upon inquiry I found that between Watch and the horse was a bond of comradeship, such as often exists between two domestic animals of different species. Thus, the dog often preferred to sleep in the stall near his big chum, or would accompany him to the pasture when he was turned loose, and would always stand by, as if overlooking the operation, when the horse was being harnessed. It may well be, therefore, that it was from the horse rather than from the man that Watch received notice when heads were turned homeward; but of the fact that some kind of telepathic communication passed between two members of the trio there is no reasonable doubt.

Some of my readers may make objection at this point that, though something like telepathic [[83]]communication appears now and then among the brutes, it should be regarded as merely freakish or sensational, like a two-headed calf; while others will surely ask, “Why, if our dogs possess such a convenient faculty, do they not use it more frequently, more obviously, and so spare themselves manifold discomforts or misunderstandings?”

Such an objection is natural enough, since we judge as we live, mostly by habit; but it has no validity, I think, and for two reasons. First, because such animals as we have thus far seen exercising the faculty (and they are but a few out of many) are apparently normal and sensible beasts, precisely like their less-gifted fellows; and second, because the telepathic power itself, when one examines it without prejudice, appears to be wholly natural, and sane or simple as the power of thought, even of such rudimentary thought as may be exercised in an animal’s head. As for emotions, more intense and penetrating than any thought, it is hardly to be questioned that a man’s fear or panic may flow through his knees into the horse he is riding, or that emotional excitement may spread through a crowd of men without visible or audible expression. That a dog should receive a wordless message or impulse from his master at a distance of three or four miles is, fundamentally, no more unnatural than that one [[84]]man should feel another’s mood at a distance of three or four feet. Whether we can explain the phenomenon on strictly biological or scientific grounds is another matter.

I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go cat-footedly when I enter that strange garret. I look with wonder on these patient, unemotional men who care nothing for a bear or an eagle, but who creep lower and ever lower in the scale of living things, searching with penetrating looks among infinitesimal microbes for the secret that shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us what life is. And because man is everywhere the same, watching these exploring biologists I remember the curious theology of certain South-Pacific savages, who say that God made all things, the stars and the world and the living man; but we cannot see Him because He is so very small, because a dancing mote or a grain of sand is for Him a roomy palace. Yet even with a modest little knowledge of biology we may find a viewpoint, I think, from which telepathy or thought-transference would appear as natural, as inevitable, as the forthgoing of light from a burning lamp.

Thus, historically there was a time when the living cell, or the cell-of-life, as one biologist calls it with rare distinction, was sensitive only to pressure; [[85]]when in its darkness it knew of an external world only by its own tremblings, in response to vibrations which poured over it from every side. Something made it tremble, and that “something” had motion or life like its own. Such, imaginatively, was the sentient cell’s first knowledge, the result of a sense of touch distributed throughout its protecting surface.

Long afterward came a time when the living cell, multiplied now a millionfold, began to develop special sense-organs, each a modification of its rudimentary sense of touch; one to receive vibrations of air, for hearing; another to catch some of the thronging ether waves, for seeing; a third to register the floating particles of matter on a sensitive membrane, for taste or smelling. By that time the cell had learned beyond a peradventure that the universe outside itself had light and color and fragrance and harmony. Finally came a day when the cell, still multiplying and growing ever more complex, became conscious of a new power within itself, most marvelous of all the powers of earth, the power to think, to feel, and to be aware of a self that registered its own impressions of the external world. And then the cell knew, as surely as it knew sound or light, that the universe held consciousness also, and some infinite source of thought and feeling. Such, apparently, [[86]]was the age-long process from the sentient cell to the living man.

Since we are following a different trail, this is hardly the time or place to face the question how this development from mere living to conscious life took place, even if one were wise or rash enough to grapple with the final problem of evolution. Yet it may not be amiss while we “rest a pipe,” as the voyageurs say, to point out that, of the two possible answers to our question (aside from the convenient and restful answer that God made things so), only one, curiously enough, has thus far been considered by our physical scientists. The thousand books and theories of evolution which one reads are all reducible to this elementary proposition: that the simple things of life became complex by inner necessity. In other words, an eye became an eye, or an oak an oak, or a man a man, simply because each must develop according to the inner law of its being.

That may be true, though the all-compelling “inner law” is still only a vague assumption, and the mystery of its origin is untouched; but why not by outer compulsion as reasonably as by inner necessity? A cell-of-life that was constantly bombarded by moving particles of matter might be compelled to develop a sense of touch, in order to save its precious life by differentiating such particles [[87]]into good and bad, or helpful and harmful. A cell over which vibrations of air and ether were continually passing might be forced for its own good to develop an ear and an eye to receive such vibrations as sound and light; and a cell over which mysterious waves of thought and emotion were ceaselessly flowing might be driven to comprehend that particular mystery by developing a thought and emotion of its own.

I do not say that this is the right answer; I mention it merely as a speculative possibility, in order to get our alleged scientific mind out of its deep rut of habit by showing that every road has two sides, though a man habitually use only one; and that Reason or Law or God, or whatever you choose to call the ultimate mainspring of life, is quite as apt to be found on one side of the road as on the other. Inner necessity is not a whit more logical or more explanatory than external force or compulsion when we face the simple fact that an animal now sees and feels in the light instead of merely existing in darkness, or that primitive cells which were dimly sentient have now become as thinking gods, knowing good and evil.

What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we have it and use it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it is a living force of some kind; that it projects itself [[88]]or its waves outward, as the sun cannot but send forth his light; that it affects men as surely as gravitation or heat or the blow of a hammer affects them,—all this is reasonably clear and certain. But how thought travels; what refined mental ether conveys it outward with a speed that makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison, and with a force that sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that the light cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep that our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an answer. Yet if we once grant the simple proposition that thought is a force, that it moves inevitably from its source to its object, the conclusion is inevitable that any thinking mind should be able to send its silent message to any other mind in the universe. There is nothing in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude such a possibility; only our present habit of speech, of too much speech, prevents us from viewing it frankly.

As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when telepathy shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or evolutionary makeshift. But that beckons us away to an imaginative flight among the clouds, and on the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow. [[89]]

The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a master’s message at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one that I cannot answer. Perhaps the reason is obvious enough to some of the dogs, which have a sidelong way of coming home from their roving, as if aware they had long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty lies not in the dog, but in his master. Every communication has two ends, one sending, the other receiving; and of a thousand owners there are hardly two who know how properly to handle a dog either by speech or by silence. Still again, one assumption implied in the question is that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are all alike; and that common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ as widely in their instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly explains why one setter readily follows his master’s word or hand, or enters into his mood, while another remains hopelessly dumb or unresponsive. The telepathic faculty appears more frequently, as we shall see, among birds or animals that habitually live in flocks or herds, and I have always witnessed its most striking or impressive manifestation between a mother animal and her young, as if some prenatal influence or control were still at work.

For example, I have occasionally had the good [[90]]luck to observe a she-wolf leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake in winter; and at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after any moving object that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks away to rush an animal that he sees moving in the woods (once that moving animal was myself), the mother heads him instantly if he is close to her; but if he is off before she can check him by a motion of her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength in chasing him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks steadily at the running cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack. If the moving object be proper game afoot, the mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it, while the pack follows stealthily behind her on either side; but if the distant object be a moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf must not meddle with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her way without a sound, and the errant cub falls into place as if he had understood her silent command.

You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience nearer home, if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of young foxes. I have spent hours by different dens, and have repeatedly witnessed what seemed to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet [[91]]heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible communication comes later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves; and then you will often hear the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’ impatient crying when they are separated in the dark woods. While the den is their home (they seldom enter it after they once roam abroad) silence is the rule, and that silence is most eloquent. For hours at a stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some stalking imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others challenging their mates to mock fights or mock hunting; and the most striking feature of the exercise, after you have become familiar with the fascinating little creatures, is that the old vixen, who lies apart where she can overlook the play and the neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect control at every instant, though never a word is uttered.

That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little brutes is constantly evident; but it is without voice or language. Now and then, when a cub’s capers lead him too far from the den, the vixen lifts her head to look at him intently; and somehow that look has the same effect as the she-wolf’s silent call; it stops the cub as if she had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If that happened once, you might overlook it as a [[92]]matter of mere chance; but it happens again and again, and always in the same challenging way. The eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches the vixen’s look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.

As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the mother must go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her feet. Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all upturned to the greater head that bends to them, and there they stand in mute intentness, as if the mother were speaking and the cubs listening. For a brief interval that tense scene endures, exquisitely impressive, while you strain your senses to catch its meaning. There is no sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear. Then the cubs scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother, without once looking back, slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth a foxy little face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving shadow in the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the face draws back, and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.

You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a cub will again show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a [[93]]human mother could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave the house with the certainty that four or five lively youngsters would keep out of danger or mischief as completely as young fox cubs keep out of it, raising children might more resemble “one grand sweet song” than it does at present.

So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent communication occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or strongly social in their habits. The timber-wolves of the North are the first examples that occur to me, and also the most puzzling. They are wary brutes, so much so that those who have spent a lifetime near them will tell you that it is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method; that your meeting with him is a matter of chance or rare accident; that not only has he marvelously keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a nose that cannot be deceived, but he can also “feel” a danger which is hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such is the Indian verdict; and I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have some sympathy with it.

The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely cunning; but it is naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that wolves, [[94]]more than most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one another, or even from a concealed hunter, who may by his excitement send forth some kind of emotional alarm. When you are sitting quietly in the woods, and a pack of wolves pass near without noticing their one enemy, though he is in plain sight, you think that they are no more cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true, so far as their cunning depends on what they may see or hear. Once when I was crossing a frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves rushed out of the nearest cover and came at me on the jump, mistaking me for a deer or some other game animal; which does not speak very highly for either their eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in all Canada when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with ready rifle near some venison which the same wolves have killed; when you see them break out of the woods upon the ice, running free and confident to the food which they know is awaiting them; when you see them stop suddenly, as if struck, though they cannot possibly see or smell you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to a meeting-point on another lake—well, then you may conclude, as I do, that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper than his five senses.

Another lupine trait which first surprised and [[95]]then challenged my woodcraft is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where his mates are hunting or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The pack is made up of his family relatives, younger or older, all mothered by the same she-wolf; and by some bond or attraction or silent communication he can go straight to them at any hour of the day or night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and they have wandered over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.

We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear presently), on the simple ground that the wolves, though incurable rovers, have bounds beyond which they seldom pass; that they return on their course with more or less regularity; and that in traveling, as distinct from hunting, they always follow definite runways, like the foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf might remember that the pack was due in a certain region on a certain day, and by going to that region and putting his nose to the runways he could quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows. There is nothing occult in such a process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.

Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact, since a brute probably [[96]]acts more intuitively and less rationally; but it does not account for the amazing certainty of a wounded wolf when separated from his pack. He always does separate, by the way; not because the others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature, but because every stricken bird or beast seeks instinctively to be alone and quiet while his hurt is healing. I have followed with keen interest the doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two days and nights in a sheltered den, after which he rose from his bed and went straight as a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed a buck and left plenty of venison behind them.

In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s seclusion, because the limping track that led from the den was but a few hours old when I found it, and the only track leading into the den was half obliterated by snow which had fallen two nights previously. How many devious miles the pack had traveled in the interim would be hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or roaming trails at widely separate points, and once I surprised them in their day-bed; but I never found the limit of their great range. A few days later that same limping wolf left another den of his, under a windfall, and headed not for the buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for another deer which the same pack had killed in a different [[97]]region, some eight or ten straight miles away, and perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly travel.

If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat was by the howling of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be true in one case, but certainly not in the other. For by great good luck I was near the pack, following a fresh trail in the gray, breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the second deer; and there was not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or a trail cry or even a growl of any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence, as wolves commonly do, their howling being a thing apart from their hunting. The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles of densely wooded hills and valleys between him and his pack.

Do you ask, “How was it possible to know all this?” From the story the snow told. At daybreak I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and was following it stealthily, with many a cautious détour and look ahead, for they are unbelievably shy brutes; and so it happened that I came upon the carcass of the deer only a few minutes after the wolves had fed and roamed lazily off toward their day-bed. I followed them too eagerly, and alarmed them before I could pick the big one I wanted; whereupon they took to rough country, [[98]]traveling a pace that left me hopelessly far behind. When I returned to the deer, to read how the wolves had surprised and killed their game, I noticed the fresh trail of a solitary wolf coming in at right angles to the trail of the hunting pack. It was the limper again, who had just eaten what he wanted and trailed off by himself. I followed and soon jumped him, and took after him on the lope, thinking I could run him down or at least come near enough for a revolver-shot; but that was a foolish notion. Even on three legs he whisked through the thick timber so much easier than I could run on snow-shoes that I never got a second glimpse of him.

By that time I was bound to know, if possible, how the limper happened to find this second deer for his comfort; so I picked up his incoming trail and ran it clear back to his den under the windfall, from which he had come as straight as if he knew exactly where he was heading. His trail was from eastward; what little air was stirring came from the south; so that it was impossible for his nose to guide him to the meat even had he been within smelling distance, as he certainly was not. The record in the snow was as plain as any other print, and from it one might reasonably conclude that either the wolves can send forth a silent food-call, with some added information, or [[99]]else that a solitary wolf may be so in touch with his pack-mates that he knows not only where they are, but also, in a general way, what they are doing.

In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou is rather a witless brute; but he, too, has his “uncanny” moods, and one who patiently follows him, with deeper interest in his anima than in his antlered head, finds him frequently doing some odd or puzzling thing which may indicate a perception more subtle than that of his dull eyes or keen ears or almost perfect nose. Here is one example of Megaleep’s peculiar way:

I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day on the barrens (treeless plains or bogs) of the Renous River in New Brunswick. For hours I had followed through alternate thick timber and open bog without alarming or even seeing my game. The animals were plainly on the move, perhaps changing their feeding-ground; and when Megaleep begins to wander no man can say where he will go, or where stop, or what he is likely to do next. Once, after trailing him eight or ten miles, twice jumping him, I met him head-on, coming briskly back in his own tracks, as if to see what was following him. From the trail I read that there were a dozen animals in the herd, and that one poor wounded brute lagged continually behind the others. He was going on three legs; [[100]]his right forefoot, the bone above it shattered by some blundering hunter’s bullet, swung helplessly as he hobbled along, leaving its pathetic record in the snow.

On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of barrens, halting to search the trail ahead, my eye caught a motion far across the open, and through the field-glass I saw my herd for the first time, resting unsuspiciously on the farther edge of the barren, a full mile or more away. From my feet the trail led down through a dense fringe of evergreen, and then straight out across the level plain. A few of the caribou were lying down; others moved lazily in or out of the forest that shut in the barren on that side; and as I watched them two animals, yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads together for a pushing match, like domestic calves at play.

Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping near the edge of it but always out of sight in the evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary caribou trail, the trail of the cripple, who had evidently wearied and turned aside to rest, perhaps knowing that his herd was near the end of its journey. A little farther on I jumped him out of a fir thicket, and watched him a moment as he hobbled deeper into the woods, heading away to the west. The course surprised me a little, for his mates [[101]]were northward; and at the thought I quickly found an opening in the cover and turned my glass upon the other caribou. Already they were in wild alarm. For a brief interval they ran about confusedly, or stood tense as they searched the plain and the surrounding woods for the source of danger; then they pushed their noses out and racked away at a marvelous pace, crossing the barren diagonally toward me and smashing into the woods a short distance ahead, following a course which must soon bring them and their wounded mate together. If I were dealing with people, I might say confidently that they were bent on finding out what the alarm was about; but as I have no means of knowing the caribou motive, I can only say that the two trails ran straight as a string through the timber to a meeting-point on the edge of another barren to the westward.

If you would reasonably explain the matter, remember that these startled animals were far away from me; that the cripple and myself were both hidden from their eyes, and that I was moving upwind and silently. It was impossible that they should hear or see or smell me; yet they were on their toes a moment after the cripple started up, as if he had rung a bell for them. It was not the first time I had witnessed a herd of animals break away when, as I suspected, they had received some [[102]]silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the last; but it was the only time when I could trace the whole process without break or question from beginning to end. And when, to test the matter to the bottom, I ran the trail of the herd back to where they had been resting, there was no track of man or beast in the surrounding woods to account for their flight.

One may explain this as a mere coincidence, which is not an explanation; or call it another example of the fact that wild animals are “queer,” which is not a fact; but in my own mind every action of the caribou and all the circumstances point to a different conclusion—namely, that the fear or warning or impulse of one animal was instantly transferred to others at a distance. I think, also, that the process was not wholly unconscious or subconscious, but that one animal sent forth his warning and the others acted upon it more or less intelligently. This last is a mere assumption, however, which cannot be proved till we learn to live in an animal’s skin.

They stood tense as they searched the plain and surrounding woods for the source of danger.

[[102]]

It is true that the event often befalls otherwise, since you may jump one animal without alarming others of the same herd; and it is possible that the degree or quality of the alarm has something to do with its carrying power, as we feel the intense emotion of a friend more quickly than his ordinary [[103]]moods. In this case the solitary caribou was tremendously startled; for I was very near, and the first intimation he had of me, or I of him, was when my snow-shoe caught on a snag and I pitched over a log almost on top of him. Yet the difficulty of drawing a conclusion from any single instance appears in this: that I have more than once stalked, killed and dressed an animal without disturbing others of his kind near at hand (it may be that no alarm was sent out, for the animal was shot before he knew the danger, and in the deep woods animals pay little attention to the sound of a rifle); and again, when I have been trying to approach a herd from leeward, I have seen them move away hurriedly, silently, suspiciously, in obedience to some warning which seemed to spread through the woods like a contagion.

The latter experience is common enough among hunters of big game, who are often at a loss to explain the sudden flight of animals that a moment ago, under precisely the same outward influences, were feeding or resting without suspicion. Thus, you may be stalking a big herd of elk, or wapiti, which are spread out loosely over half a mountainside. You are keen for the master bull with the noble antlers; nothing else interests you, more’s the pity; but you soon learn that the cunning old [[104]]brute is hidden somewhere in the midst of the herd, depending on the screen of cow-elk to warn him of danger to his precious skin. Waiting impatiently till this vanguard has moved aside, you attempt to worm your way nearer to the hidden bull. You are succeeding beautifully, you think, when a single cow that you overlooked begins to act uneasily. She has not seen or heard you, certainly, and the wind is still in your favor; but there she stands, like an image of suspicion, head up, looking, listening, testing the air, till she makes up her mind she would as lief be somewhere else, when without cry or grunt or warning of any kind that ears can hear she turns and glides rapidly away.

Now if you value animal lore above stuffed skins, or experience above the babble of hunting naturalists, forget the big bull and his greed-stirring antlers; scramble quickly to the highest outlook at hand, and use your eyes. No alarm has been sounded; the vast silence is unbroken; yet for some mysterious reason the whole herd is suddenly on the move. To your right, to your left, near at hand or far away, bushes quiver or jump; alert brown forms appear or vanish like shadows, all silent and all heading in the direction taken by the first sentinel. One moment there are scores of elk in sight, feeding or resting [[105]]quietly; the next they are gone and the great hillside is lifeless. The thrill of that silent, moving drama has more wisdom in it, yes, and more pleasure, than the crash of your barbarous rifle or the convulsive kicking of a stricken beast that knows not why you should kill him.

Such is the experience, known to almost every elk-hunter who has learned that life is more interesting than death; and I know nothing of deer nature to explain it save this—that the whole herd has suddenly felt and understood the silent impulse to go, and has obeyed it without a question, as the young wolf or fox cub obeys the silent return call of his watchful mother.

Such impulses seem to be more common and more dependable among the whales, which have rudimentary or imperfect sense-organs, but which are nevertheless delicately sensitive to external impressions, to the approach of unseen danger, to the movements of the tiny creatures on which they feed, to changes of wind or tide and to a falling barometer, as if nature had given them a first-class feeling apparatus of some kind to make up for their poor eyes and ears. Repeatedly have I been struck by this extraordinary sensitiveness when watching the monstrous creatures feeding with the tide in one of the great bays of the Newfoundland or the Labrador coast. If I lowered a [[106]]boat to approach one of them, he would disappear silently before I could ever get near enough to see clearly what he was doing. That seemed odd to me; but presently I began to notice a more puzzling thing: at the instant my whale took alarm every other whale of the same species seemed to be moved by the same impulse, sounding when the first sounded, or else turning with him to head for the open sea.

A score of times I tried the experiment, and commonly, but not invariably, with the same result. I would sight a few leviathans playing or feeding, shooting up from the deep, breaching half their length out of water to fall back with a tremendous souse; and through my glasses I would pick up others here or there in the same bay. Selecting a certain whale, I would glide rapidly toward him, crouching low in the dory and sculling silently by means of an oar over the stern. By some odd channel of perception (not by sight, certainly, for I kept out of the narrow range of his eye, and a whale is not supposed to smell or hear) he would invariably get wind of me and go down; and then, jumping to my feet, I would see other whales in the distance catch the instant alarm, some upending as they plunged to the deeps, others whirling seaward and forging full speed ahead. [[107]]

This observation of mine is not unique, as I supposed, for later I heard it echoed as a matter of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I talked with my friend, Captain Rule, about the ways of the great creatures he had followed in the old whaling-days, he said, “The queerest habit of a whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul of, was this: when I got my boat close enough to a sperm-whale to put an iron into him, every other sperm-whale within ten miles would turn flukes, as if he had been harpooned, too.” But he added that he had not noticed the same contagion of alarm, not in the same striking or instantaneous way, when hunting the right or Greenland whale—perhaps because the latter is, as a rule, more solitary in its habits.

Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the observation of most folk; but the winter birds in your own yard may some time give you a hint, at least, of the same mysterious transference of an impulse over wide distances. When you scatter food for them during a cold snap or after a storm (it is better not to feed them regularly, I think, especially in mild weather when their proper food is not covered with snow) your bounty is at first neglected except by the house sparrows and starlings. Unlike our native birds, these imported foreigners are easily “pauperized,” seeking [[108]]no food for themselves so long as you take care of them. They keep tabs on you, also, waiting patiently about the house, and soon learn what it means when you emerge from your back door on a snowy morning with a broom in one hand and a pan in the other. They are feeding greedily the moment your back is turned, and for a time they are the only birds at the table. When they have gorged themselves, for they have no manners, a few tree-sparrows and juncos flit in to eat daintily. Then suddenly the wilder birds appear—jays, chickadees, siskins, kinglets and, oh, welcome! a flock of bob-whites—coming from you know not where, in obedience to a summons which you have not heard. Some of these may have visited the yard in time past, and are returning to it now, hunger driven; but others you have never before met within the city limits, and a few have their accustomed dwelling in the pine woods, which are miles away. How did these hungry hermits suddenly learn that food was here?

The answer to that question is simple, and entirely “sensible” if you think only of birds that live or habitually glean in your neighborhood. Some of them saw you scatter the food, or else found it by searching, while others spied these lucky ones feeding and came quickly to join the feast. For birds that live wider afield there is also [[109]]an explanation that your senses can approve, though it is probably wrong or only half right: from a distance they chanced to see wings speeding in the direction of your yard, and followed them expectantly because wings may be as eloquent as voices, the flight of a bird when he is heading for food being very different from the flight of the same bird when he is merely looking for food. But these most rare visitors, kinglets or pine-finches or grosbeaks or bob-whites, that never before entered your yard, and that would not be here now had you not thought to scatter food this morning,—at these you shake your head, calling it chance or Providence or mystery, according to your mood or disposition. To me, after observing the matter closely many times, the reasonable explanation of these rare visitors is that either wild birds know how to send forth a silent food-call or, more likely, that the excitement of feeding birds spreads powerfully outward, and is felt by other starving birds, alert and sensitive, at a distance beyond all possible range of sight or hearing. By no other hypothesis can I account for the fact that certain wild birds make their appearance in my yard at a moment when a number of other birds are eagerly feeding, and at no other time, though I watch for them from one year’s end to another.

Like every other explanation, whether of stars [[110]]or starlings, this also leads to a greater mystery. The distance at which such a summoning call can be felt by others must be straitly limited, else would all the starving birds of a state be flocking to my yard on certain mornings; and the force by which the silent call is projected is as unknown as the rare mental ether which bears its waves or vibrations in all directions. Yet the problem need not greatly trouble us, since the answer, when it comes, will be as natural as breathing. If silent or telepathic communication exists in nature, and I think it surely does, the mystery before us is no greater than that which daily confronts the astronomer or the wireless operator. One measures the speed of light from Orion; the other projects his finger-touch across an ocean; but neither can tell or even guess the quality of the medium by which the light or the electric wave is carried to its destination.

[[111]]

[[Contents]]

V

The Swarm Spirit

This is a chapter on the wing drill of birds, the swarming of bees, the panics and unseasonal migrations of larger or smaller beasts, and other curious phenomena in which the wild creatures of a flock or herd all act in unison, doing the same thing at the same time, as if governed by a single will rather than by individual motives. If it should turn out that the single will were expressed in a voice or cry, or even in a projected impulse, then are we again face to face with our problem of animal communication.

Of the fact of collective action there is no doubt, many naturalists having witnessed it; and there is also a strictly orthodox explanation. Thus, when [[112]]you see a large flock of crows “drilling” in the spring or autumn, rising or falling or wheeling all together with marvelous precision, the ornithologists resolve the matter by saying that the many crows act as one crow because they follow a “collective impulse”; that is, because the same impulse to rise or fall or wheel seizes upon them all at precisely the same moment. And this they tell you quite simply, as if pointing out an obvious fact of natural history, when in reality they are showing you the rarest chimera that ever looked out of a vacuum.

Now the wonderful wing drill of certain birds has something in it which I cannot quite fathom or understand, not even with a miracle of collective impulse to help me; yet I have observed two characteristics of the ordered flight which may help to dispel the fog of assumption that now envelops it. The first is, that the drill is seen only when an uncommonly large number of birds of the same kind are gathered together, on a sunny day of early spring, as a rule, or in the perfection of autumn weather.

The starlings[1] furnish us an excellent example [[113]]of this peculiarity. For months at a stretch you see them about the house, first in pairs, next in family groups, then in larger companies, made up, I think, of birds raised in the same neighborhood and probably all more or less related; but though you watch these companies attentively from dawn to dusk, you shall never see them going through any unusual wing drill. Then comes an hour when flocks of starlings appear on all sides, heading to a common center. They gather in trees here or there about the edges of a great field or a strip of open beach, all jabbering like the blackbirds, which they imitate in their cries, flitting about in ceaseless commotion, but apparently keeping their family or tribal organization intact. Suddenly, as at a signal, they all launch themselves toward the center of the field; the hundred companies unite in one immense flock, and presto! the drill is on. The birds are no longer individuals, but a single-minded myriad, which wheels or veers with such precision that the ash of their ten-thousand wings when they turn is like the flicker of a signal-glass in the sun.

The same characteristic of uncommon numbers holds true of the crows and, indeed, of all other species of birds, save one, that ever practise the wing drill. Wild geese when in small companies, each a family unit, have a regular and beautiful [[114]]flight in harrow-shaped formation; but I have never witnessed anything like a wing drill among them save on one occasion, when a thousand or more of the birds were gathered together for a few days of frolic before beginning the southern migration. Nor have I ever seen the drill among thrushes or warblers or sparrows or terns or seagulls, which sometimes gather in uncounted numbers, but which do not, apparently, have the same motive that leads crows or starlings to unite in a kind of rhythmic air-dance on periodic occasions.

A second marked characteristic of the wing drill is that it is invariably a manifestation of play or sport, and that the individual birds, though they keep the order of the play marvelously well, show in their looks and voices a suppressed emotional excitement. The drill is never seen when birds are migrating or feeding or fleeing from danger, though thousands of them may be together at such a time, but only when they assemble in a spirit of fun or exercise, and their bodily needs are satisfied, and the weather or the barometer is just right, and no enemy is near to trouble them. Whatever their motive or impulse, therefore, it is certainly not universal or even widespread among the birds, since most of them do not practise the drill; nor is it in the least like that mysterious impulse which suddenly sets all the squirrels of a region in [[115]]migration, or calls the lemmings to hurry over plain and forest and mountain till they all drown themselves in the distant sea; for no sooner is the brief drill over than the companies scatter quietly, each to its own place, and the individual birds are again alert, inquisitive, well balanced, precisely as they were before.

The drill is seen at its best among the plover, I think; and, curiously enough, these are the only birds I know that practise it frequently, in small or large numbers and in all weathers. I have often watched a flock come sweeping in to my decoys, gurgling like a thousand fifes with bubbles in them; and never have I met these perfectly drilled birds, which stay with us but a few hours on their rapid journey from the far north to the far south, without renewed wonder at their wildness, their tameness, their incomprehensible ways. That you may visualize our problem before I venture an explanation, here is what you may see if you can forget your gun to observe nature with a deeper interest:

You have risen soon after midnight, called by the storm and the shrilling of passing plover, and long before daylight you are waiting for the birds on the burnt-over plain. Your “stand” is a hole in the earth, hidden by a few berry-bushes; and before you, at right angles with the course of the storm (for plover always wheel to head into the [[116]]wind when they take the ground), are some scores of rudely painted decoys. As the day breaks you see against the east a motion as of wings, and your call rings out wild and clear, to be echoed on the instant. In response to your whistle the distant motion grows wildly fantastic; it begins to whirl and eddy, as if a wisp of fog were rolling swiftly down-wind; only in some mysterious fashion the fog holds together, and in it are curious flickerings. Those are plover, certainly; no other birds have that perfect unity of movement; and now, since they are looking for the source of the call they have just heard, you throw your cap in the air or wave a handkerchief to attract attention. There is an answering flash of white from the under side of their wings as the plover catch your signal and turn all at once to meet it. Here they come, driving in at terrific speed straight at you!

It is better to stop calling now, because the plover will soon see your decoys; and these birds when on the ground make no sound except a low, pulsating whistle of welcome or recall. This is uttered but seldom, and unless you can imitate it, which is not likely, your whistling will do no good. Besides, it could not possibly be heard. Listen to that musical babel, and let your nerves dance to it! In all nature there is nothing to compare for utter wildness with the fluting of incoming plover. [[117]]

On they come, hundreds of quivering lines, which are the thin edges of wings, moving as one to a definite goal. Their keen eyes caught the first wave of your handkerchief in the distance; and now they see their own kind on the ground, as they think, and their babel changes as they begin to talk to them. Suddenly, and so instantaneously that it makes you blink, there is a change of some kind in every quivering pair of wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are sure that the plover are still coming, for you did not see them turn; but the lines grow smaller, dimmer, and you know that every bird in the flock has whirled, as if at command, and is now heading straight away. You put your fingers to your lips and send out the eery plover call again and again; but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better whistling. The quivering lines are now all blurred in one; with a final flicker they disappear below a rise of ground; the birds are gone, and you cease your vain calling. Then, when you are thinking you will never see that flock again, a cloud of wings shoot up from the plain against the horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous flight, not as a thousand individuals but as a unit, and the lines grow larger, clearer, as the plover come sweeping back to your decoys once more.

Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it repeatedly [[118]]on the Nantucket moors, many years ago. The only way I can explain the instantaneous change of flight is by the assumption, no longer strange or untested, that from some alarmed plover on the fringe or at the center of the flock a warning impulse is sent out, and the birds all feel and obey it as one bird. That the warning is a silent one I am convinced, for it seems impossible that any peculiar whistle could be heard or understood in that wild clamor of whistling. Nor is it a satisfactory hypothesis that one bird sees the danger or suspects the quality of the decoys, and all the others copy his swift flight; for in that case there must be succession or delay or straggling in the turning, and the impression left on the eye is not of succession, but of almost perfect unity of movement.

The only other explanation of the plovers’ action is the one commonly found in the bird-books, to which I have already briefly referred, and which we must now examine more narrowly. It assumes that all the birds of a migrating flock are moved not by individual wills, but by a collective impulse or instinct, which affects them all alike at the same instant. In support of this favorite theory we are told to consider the bees, which are said to have no individual motives, and no need for them, since they blindly follow a swarm or hive instinct [[119]]that makes them all precisely alike in their actions. The same swarm instinct appears often in the birds, but less strongly, because they are more highly developed creatures, with more need and therefore more capacity for individual incentive.

This illustration of the hive is offered so confidently and accepted so readily, as if it were an axiom of natural history, that one hesitates to disturb the ancient idol in its wonted seat. Yet one might argue that any living impulse, whether in bees or birds, must proceed from a living source, and, if that be granted, speculate on the absorbing business of a nature or a heaven that should be perpetually interfering in behalf of every earthly flock or swarm or herd by sending the appropriate impulse at precisely the right moment. And when our speculation is at an end, I submit the fact that, when I have broken open a honey-tree in the woods, one bee falls upon the sweets to gorge himself withal, while another from the same swarm falls angrily upon me and dies fighting; which seems to upset the collective-impulse idol completely.

I must confess here that I know very little about bees. They are still a mystery to me, and I would rather keep silence about them until I find one bee that I fancy I understand, or one man who offers something better than a very hazy or mystical [[120]]explanation of a bee’s extraordinary action. Yet I have watched long hours at a hive, have handled a swarm without gloves or mask, and have performed a few experiments—enough to convince me that the collective-impulse theory does not always hold true to fact even among our honey-makers. Indeed, I doubt that it ever holds true, or that there is in nature any such mysterious thing as a swarm or flock or herd impulse.

In the first place, the bees of the same swarm do not look alike or act alike except superficially; at least I have not so observed them. Study the heads or the feet of any two bees under a glass, and you shall find as much variety as in the heads or feet of any other two creatures of the same kind, whether brute or human. The lines of difference run smaller, to be sure; but they are always there. In action also the bees are variable; they do marvelously wise things at one moment, or marvelously stupid things at another; but they do not all and always do the same thing under the same circumstances, for when I have experimented with selected bees from the same hive I have noticed very different results; which leads me to suspect that even here I am dealing with individuals rather than with detached fragments of a swarm. It is hard, for example, to make a trap so simple that an imprisoned bee will find his way out of it; [[121]]but when by great ingenuity you do at last make a trap so very simple that it seems any creature with legs must walk out by the open door, perhaps one bee in five will do the trick; while the other four wait patiently until they die for more simplicity.

Again, while your eye often sees unity of action among the wild creatures, neither your reading nor your own reason will ever reveal a scrap of positive evidence that there is in nature any such convenient thing (humanly convenient, that is, for explanations) as a swarm or flock instinct; though, like the mythical struggle for existence, we are forever hearing about it or building theories upon it. So far as we know anything about instinct, it is neither collective nor incorporeal. It is, to use the definition of Mark Hopkins, which is as good as another and beautifully memorable, “a propensity prior to experience and independent of instruction.” And the only needful addition to this high-sounding definition is, that it is a “propensity” lodged in an individual, every time. It is not and cannot be lodged in a swarm or a hive; you must either put it into each of two bees or else put it between them, leaving them both untouched. In other words, the swarm instinct has logically no abiding-place and no reality; it is a castle in the air with no solid foundation to rest on. [[122]]

On its practical or pragmatic side also the theory is a failure, since the things bees are said to do in obedience to an incorporeal swarm instinct are more naturally and more reasonably explained by other causes. Bees swarm, apparently, in the lead or under the influence of individuals; and it needs only a pair of eyes to discover that there are plenty of individual laggards and blunderers in the process. They grow angry not all at once, but successively; not because a swarm instinct impels them to anger, but because one irritated bee gives off a pungent odor or raises a militant buzzing, and the others smell the odor or hear the buzzing and are inflamed by it, each through his own senses and by the working of his own motives. On a hot day you will see a few bees fanning air into the hive with their wings, and when these grow weary others take their places; but if it were a swarm instinct that impelled them, you would see all the bees fanning or all sweltering at the same moment. As for the honey-making instinct, on any early-spring day you will find a few bees working in the nearest greenhouse, while the others, which are supposed to be governed by the same collective impulse, are comfortably torpid in the hive or else eating honey faster than these enterprising ones can make it.

I judge, therefore, that the communistic bees [[123]]have some individual notions, and any show of individuality is so at variance with the common-impulse theory that it seems to illustrate Spencer’s definition of tragedy, which is, “a theory slain by a fact.” In short, bees have our common social instinct highly developed, or overdeveloped, and possibly they have also, like all the higher orders, a stronger or weaker instinct of imitation; but these are very different matters, more natural and more consistent with the facts than is the alleged swarm instinct.

A scientific friend, the most observant ornithologist I have ever met, has just offered an interesting explanation of the flock or herd phenomena we are here considering. He finds little evidence of a swarm instinct, as distinct from our familiar social instinct; but he has often marveled at the wing drill of birds, and has twice witnessed an alarm or warning of danger spread silently among a herd of scattered beasts; and he accounts for the observed facts by the supposition that the minds (or what corresponds to the minds) of the lower orders are often moved not from within, but from without—that is, not by instinct or by sense impressions, not by what they or others of their kind may see or hear, but by some external and unknown influence. My caribou rushed away, he thinks, and my incoming plover turned as one [[124]]bird from my decoys, because a warning impulse fell upon them at a moment when they were in danger, but knew it not; and they obeyed it, as they obey all their impulses, without conscious thought or knowledge of what they are doing or why they are doing it.

Here is some suggestion of a very modern psychology which is inclined to regard the mind as a thought-receiving rather than as a thought-producing instrument, and with that I have some sympathy; but here is also a rejuvenation of the incorporeal swarm instinct and other fantastic or romantic notions of animals which preclude observation. If the anima of a bird or beast is so constituted that it can receive impulses from a mysterious and unknown source, what is to prevent it from receiving such silent impulses from another anima like itself? And why seek an unseen agent for the warning to my caribou or my plover when one of the creatures saw the danger and was enough moved by it to sound a mental tocsin?

The trouble with my friend’s explanation, and with all others I have thus far heard or read, is twofold. First, like the swarm-impulse theory, it really explains nothing, but avoids one mystery or difficulty by taking refuge in another. There was a Hindu philosopher who used to teach, after the manner of his school, that the earth stood [[125]]fast because it rested on the back of a great elephant; which was satisfactory till a thoughtful child asked, “But the elephant, what does he stand on?” So when I see intelligent caribou or plover fleeing from an unsensed danger, and am told that they have received an impulse from without, I am bound to ask, “Where did that impulse come from, and who sent it?” For emotional impulses do not drop like rain from the clouds, or fall like apples from unseen trees; they must have their source in a living, intelligent being of some kind, who must feel the impulse before sending it to others. No other explanation is humanly comprehensible.

This leads to the second objection to the theory of external impulse, and to every other notion of a collective or incorporeal swarm instinct—namely, that it contradicts all the previous experience of the wild creature, or at least all educative experience, which lies plain and clear to our observation. To each bird and animal are given individual senses, individual wit and a personal anima; and each begins his mortal experience not in a great flock or herd, but always in solitary fashion, under the care and guidance of a mother animal that has a saving knowledge of a world in which the little one is a stranger. Thus, I watch the innocent fawn when it begins to follow [[126]]the wary old doe, or the fledgling snipe as it leaves the nest under expert guidance, or the wonder-eyed cub coming forth from its den at the call of the gaunt old she-wolf. In each case I see a mother intelligently caring for her young, leading them to food, warding them from danger, calling them now to assemble or now to scatter; and before my eyes these ignorant youngsters quickly learn to adapt themselves to the mother’s ways and to obey her every signal. Sometimes I see them plainly when some manner of silent communication passes among them (something perhaps akin to that which passes when you catch a friend’s eye and send your thought or order to him across a crowded room), and it has even seemed to me, as recorded elsewhere in our observation of wolf and fox dens, that the young understand this silent communication more readily than they learn the meaning of audible cries expressive of food or danger.

Such is the wild creature’s earliest experience, his training to accommodate himself to the world, and to ways that wiser creatures of his own kind have found good in the world. When his first winter draws near he is led by his mother to join the herd or pack or migrating flock; and he is then ready not for some mysterious new herd or flock instinct, but for the same old signals that have served well to guide or warn him ever since [[127]]he was born. I conclude, therefore, naturally and reasonably, that my caribou broke away and my incoming plover changed their flight because one of their number detected danger and sent forth a warning impulse, which the others obeyed promptly because they were accustomed to just such communications. There was nothing unnatural or mysterious or even new in the experience. So far as I can see or judge, there is no place or need for a collective herd or flock impulse, and the birds and beasts have no training or experience by which to interpret such an impulse if it fell upon them out of heaven.

Our human experience, moreover, especially that which befalls on the borderland of the subconscious world where the wild creatures mostly live, may give point and meaning to our natural philosophy. There are emotions, desires, impulses which may be conveyed by shouting; and there are others which may well be told without shouting, or even without words. A cheerful man radiates cheerfulness; a strong man, strength; a brave man, courage (we do not know to what extent or with what limitations); and a woman may be more irritated by a man who says nothing than by a man who says too much. These common daily trials may be as side-lights on the tremendous fact that love, fear, hate,—every intense emotion is a [[128]]force in itself, a force to be reckoned with, apart from the cry or the look by which it is expressed; that all such emotions project themselves outward; and that possibly, or very probably, there is some definite medium to convey them, as an unknown medium which we call “ether” conveys the waves of light.

It is true that we habitually receive such emotional impulses from others by means of our eyes or ears; but sometimes we apparently imbibe them through our skin, as Anthony Trollope said he learned Latin, and once in a way we receive them from another without knowing or thinking of the process at all. It is noteworthy that the most companionable people in the world are silent people, especially a silent friend, and that the silence of any man is invariably more eloquent than his speech. The silence of one man rests you like a melody; the silence of another bores you to yawning, perhaps because it is a “dead” silence; the quietude of a third excites your curiosity to such an extent that, for once in your life, you behave like a perfectly natural animal; that is, you go round the silent one, as it were, view him mentally from all sides, sniff at his opinions from leeward, whir your wings in his face like a sparrow, or stamp your foot at him like a rabbit—all this to stir him up and to uncover what interesting [[129]]thing lies behind his silence. And why? Simply because every living man is silently, unconsciously projecting his real thought or feeling, and you are unconsciously understanding it or else making a vain conscious effort in that direction.

Such experiences are commonly confined to a room, to the circle of an open fire; but they are not limited by necessity to any narrow reach, since there is nothing in a wall to hinder a man’s love or hate from passing through, or in the air to check its far-going, or in the nature of another man to prevent its reception. The influence of one person’s unvoiced will or purpose or warning or summons upon another person at a distance, should it turn out more common than we now believe possible because of our habit of speech, would be nothing unnatural or mysterious, but rather a true working of the subconscious or animal mind, which had its own way of communication before ever speech was invented.

Whitman, who sometimes got hold of the tail end of philosophy (and who was wont to believe he could drag it out, like a trapped woodchuck, and whirl it around his head with barbaric whoops), was often seen at the burrow of this thought-transference doctrine:

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? [[130]]

Why are there men and women that while they are near me the sunlight expands my blood?

Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

What is it that I interchange so suddenly with strangers?

What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?

What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?

What gives me to be free to woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

Again, our familiar human experience may throw some clearer light than ever comes from the laboratory of animal psychologists upon the action of gregarious brutes in their so-called blind panics, when they are said to be governed by some extraneous or non-individual herd impulse. How such a theory originated is a puzzle to one who has closely observed animals in the open, since their panics are never “blind,” and their “extraneous” impulse may often be traced to an alarmed animal of their own kind, or even to an excited human being, whose emotions are animal-like both in their manifestation and in their irritating effect. A dog is more easily roused by human than by canine excitement. A frightened rider sends his fear or irresolution in exaggerated form into the horse beneath him. The herd of swine that ran down a steep place into the sea were [[131]]possessed, I should say, not by exorcised demons, but by the hysteria received directly from some man or woman of the excited crowd in the immediate neighborhood. Panic is more infectious than any fever, and knows no barriers between brute and human. Indeed, in a frightened crowd in the Subway, in a theater where smoke appears, or in any other scene of emotional excitement, you may in a few minutes observe actions more panicky, more suggestive of a herd impulse (if there be such a fantastic thing in orderly nature), than can be seen in a whole lifetime of watching wild animals.

In my head at this moment is the vivid impression of a night when I was caught and carried away by a crowd of Italian socialists, twenty thousand frenzied men and a few ferocious women, that first eddied like a storm-tide about the great square under the cathedral at Milan, howling, shrieking, imprecating, and then poured tumultuously through choked streets to hurl paving-blocks at the innocent roof of the railroad station, as at a symbol of government. The roof was of glass, and the clattering smash of it seemed to get on the nerves of men, like the cry of sick-em! to an excited dog, rousing them to a senseless fury of destruction. Clear and thrilling above the tumult a bugle sang, like a note from heaven, and into [[132]]the seething mass of humanity charged a squadron of cavalry, striking left or right with the flats of their sabers, raising a new hubbub of shrieks and imprecations as the weaker were trampled down. Fear? That crowd knew no more of fear just then than an upturned hive of bees. They met the charge with a roar, a hoarse, solid shout that seemed to sweep the cavalry away like smoke in the wind. Unarmed men swarmed at the horses like enraged baboons, hurling stones or curses as they went. The rush ended in a triumphant yell, and riderless horses, their eyes and nostrils aflame, went plunging, kicking, squealing through the pandemonium.

There must have been something tremendously animal in the scene, after all; for when I recall it now I see, as if Memory had carved her statue of the event, an upreared horse with a crumpled rider toppling from the saddle; and I hear not the shouts or curses of men, but the horrible scream of a maddened brute.

It was the night, many years ago, when news of disaster to the Italian army at Adowa broke loose, after being long suppressed, and I learned then for the first time what emotional excitement means when the gates are all down. One had to hold himself against it, as against a flood or a mighty wind. To yield, to lose self-control even for an instant, was to find oneself howling, reaching [[133]]for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy, lifting a bare fist against charging horse or swinging steel, like the other lunatics. I caught a man by the shoulders, held him, and bade him in his own language tell me what the row was about; but he only stared at me wildly, his mouth open. I caught another, and he struck at my face; a third, and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one gave me a half-coherent answer, a man whom I dragged from under a saber and pushed into a side-street. His dear Ambrogio had been conscripted by the government, he howled (I suppose they had sent his son or brother with a disaffected Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and they were all robbers, oppressors, murderers—he finished by jerking loose from my grasp and hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again.

Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that amazing scene and knowing nothing of its motive, I might easily have concluded that some mysterious herd impulse was driving all these creatures to they knew not what; but, being human, I knew perfectly well that even this unmanageable crowd had taken its cue from some leader; that the senseless emotion which inflamed them had originated with individuals, who had some ground for their passion; and that from the individual the excitement spread in pestilential fashion until the whole [[134]]mob caught it and bent to it, as a field of grass bends to the storm.

Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of logic through a long digression), when I go as a man among caribou or wolves or plover or crows, and see the whole herd or pack or flock acting as one, as if swayed by a single will, I see no reason why I should evoke an incorporeal swarm impulse, or “call a spirit from the vasty deep” of the unknown to explain their similarity of action, since there are natural causes which may account for the matter perfectly—familiar causes, too, which still influence men and women as they influence the remote wood folk.

No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is rather an attempt to banish the delusion that there is any such thing as a distinct animal psychology. Science has many forms, and still plenty of delusions, but there is a basic principle to which she holds steadily—namely, that Nature is of one piece because her laws are constant. It follows that, if you know anything of a surety about your own mind, you may confidently apply the knowledge to any other mind in the universe, whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth. The only question is, How far may the term “mind” be properly applied to the brute? [[135]]

That unanswered question does not immediately concern us, for in speaking of mind we commonly mean the conscious or reasoning human article, and we are dealing here with the subconscious mind, which seems to work after the same fashion whether it appears on two legs or four. A dog does not know why he becomes excited in a commotion that does not personally concern him, or why he feels impelled to hasten to an outcry from an unknown source, or why he looks up, contrary to all his habits, when everybody else is looking up; and neither does a man know why he does just such things. Man and brute both act in obedience to something deeper, more primal and more dependable than reason, and in this subconscious field they are akin; otherwise it would be impossible for a man ever to train or to understand a brute, and our companionable dogs would be as distant as the seraphim.

When, therefore, the same unreasoning actions that are attributed to a mysterious collective impulse among birds or animals are found among men to depend on a succession of individual impulses, it is good psychology as well as good natural history to dismiss the whole herd instinct as another thoughtless myth. The familiar social and imitative instincts, the contagion of excitement, the outward projection of emotional impulses, [[136]]the sensitive bodily nature of an animal which enables him to respond to such impulses even when they are unaccompanied by a voice or cry,—these are comparatively simple and “sensible” matters which explain all the phenomena of flock or herd life more naturally and more reasonably.

[[137]]

[1] I am speaking of starlings as they now appear in southern New England. They were brought from Europe a few years ago, and are multiplying at an alarming rate. They have formed some curious new habits here; even their voices are very different from the voices of starlings as I have heard them in Europe. [↑]

[[Contents]]

VI

Where Silence is Eloquent

Looking back a moment on our trail of animal “talk” before following it onward, we see, first, that birds and beasts have certain audible cries which convey a more or less definite meaning of food or danger or assembly; and second, that they apparently have also some “telepathic” faculty of sending emotional impulses to others of their kind at a distance. The last has not been proved, to be sure; we have seen little more than enough to establish it as a working hypothesis; but whether we study science or history or an individual bird or beast, it is better to follow some integrating method or principle than to blunder around in a chaos of unrelated details. [[138]]And the hypothesis of silent communication certainly “works,” since it helps greatly to clarify certain observed phenomena of animal life that are otherwise darkly mysterious.

When the same dimly defined telepathic power appears in a man or woman—so rarely that we are filled with wonder, as in the shadow of a great mystery or a great discovery—it is not a new but a very old matter, I think, being merely a survival or reappearance of a faculty that may have once been in common use among gregarious creatures. All men seem to have some hint or suggestion of telepathy in them, as shown by their ability to “speak with their eyes” or to influence their children by a look; and the few who have enough of it to be conspicuous receive it, undoubtedly, by some law or freak of heredity, such as enables one man in a million to wag his ears, or one in a thousand to follow a subconscious sense of direction so confidently that, after wandering about the big woods all day, he turns at nightfall and heads straight for his camp like a homing pigeon. The rest of us, meanwhile, by employing speech exclusively to express thought or emotion, and by habitually depending on five senses for all our impressions of the external world, have not only neglected but even lost all memory of the gift that once was ours. As an inevitable consequence [[139]]Nature has taken her gift away, as she atrophies a muscle that is no longer used, or devitalizes the nerve of sight in creatures, such as the fishes of Mammoth Cave, that have lived long time in darkness.