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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Mabel Osgood Wright's "Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin" is a compelling exploration of the lives and characteristics of domestic animals in late 19th-century America. Wright employs a lyrical and vivid narrative style, merging anecdotal storytelling with keen observational insights. Her work falls squarely within the context of American naturalism and early environmental literature, addressing the interconnectedness of humans and animals within the cultural landscape of the time. Through a series of affectionate portraits, the book articulates the emotional and practical bonds between people and their four-legged companions, inviting readers to reconsider the value of animal life in the American experience. Mabel Osgood Wright was a pioneering figure in American literature and natural history, known for her deep empathy towards animals and her commitment to wildlife conservation. Her upbringing in a family that valued the outdoors and her extensive travels enriched her understanding of animal behavior and aesthetics, blending fact and fiction in ways that resonate with both scientific rigor and artistic flair. This passion reflects her broader commitment to advocating for the humane treatment of animals, particularly through her role in the formation of organizations dedicated to animal welfare. Readers seeking a thoughtful and heartwarming account of American domestic animals will find in Wright's "Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin" a timeless tribute that intertwines nature, culture, and compassion. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the human-animal relationship, appealing to both animal lovers and scholars alike. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin
Table of Contents
Introduction
This book invites readers to recognize the mammals of North America as neighbors and kin, worthy of attention and care. Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin by Mabel Osgood Wright belongs to the tradition of natural history writing that flourished in the United States in the late nineteenth century, when the nature-study movement encouraged everyday observation of plants and animals. As an American naturalist and author, Wright addresses general readers with clarity and warmth, presenting the continent’s “four-footed” inhabitants in accessible, engaging prose. The result is a work that opens doors to scientific understanding while keeping curiosity and wonder at the forefront.
Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin offers a guided introduction to the diversity of mammal life across North America and situates each creature within a larger web of relations. Rather than a technical manual, it is a companionable survey that explains how animals live, feed, travel, and rear their young, and how they fit into recognizable families. The voice is informative without being austere, inviting readers to look closely at familiar landscapes and to imagine the hidden lives that unfold there. The mood balances enthusiasm with careful observation, fostering an attitude of respect toward wildlife and the environments they inhabit.
Published amid the late nineteenth-century expansion of popular science, the book reflects an era that sought to translate current knowledge for household and classroom audiences. Wright’s approach distills prevailing ideas about classification, behavior, and adaptation into plainspoken exposition. While grounded in the scientific understanding of its time, the emphasis remains practical and observational, encouraging readers to connect names and traits with real animals and places. In this context, Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin aligns with educational currents that valued firsthand experience and cultivated attentiveness, linking natural history to daily life rather than relegating it to laboratories or lecture halls.
A central theme is kinship—how one species resembles another, how families of animals share structures and habits, and how each fits into a broader lineage. This sense of relation extends to landscapes themselves: forests, fields, coasts, and mountains become settings that shape behavior and survival. Equally important is the ethical dimension of looking closely without harm, learning to recognize signs, patterns, and needs. The book underscores interdependence, showing how predators, prey, and environment keep one another in balance. By foregrounding adaptation and coexistence, it opens a path to thinking about stewardship long before conservation became a widespread public cause.
Readers today may find in this work a gentle antidote to distance from the natural world. Its measured pace invites lingering over details—the curve of a track, the architecture of a den, the rhythms of foraging—while connecting those details to larger ideas. It models a way of learning that favors patient attention, careful description, and a readiness to revise one’s assumptions in light of what the field reveals. In a time of rapid environmental change, such habits of mind carry renewed relevance, reminding us that understanding begins with noticing and that empathy often follows knowledge.
Stylistically, Wright blends clear classification with narrative touches that bring animals into focus without romanticizing them. The prose is formal enough to guide, yet welcoming enough to encourage curious readers to continue exploring beyond the page. Throughout, the emphasis is on intelligibility: technical terms appear in service of comprehension, not display. This makes the book suitable for a broad audience, from newcomers to those who seek a refresher in foundational natural history. Its structure—grouping related mammals and moving from general traits to particular examples—helps readers build a mental map of relationships they can carry into their own observations.
Taken together, Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin becomes both a primer and an invitation: a primer on the mammals that share the continent, and an invitation to meet them with humility and interest. It offers a way of reading the outdoors that respects distance while nurturing familiarity, asking us to see in each species a story of adaptation and place. Approached in this spirit, the book provides not only information but a perspective—one that values connection over conquest, attention over assumption, and kinship over spectacle—making it a durable companion for anyone who wishes to look more closely at the living world.
Synopsis (Selection)
Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin presents a guided survey of the mammals of North America, written to introduce general readers and students to the continent’s familiar and elusive species. Mabel Osgood Wright arranges clear descriptions of animals by their natural groups, explains how they live, and notes the signs by which they may be recognized. The book balances concise accounts of form, food, and behavior with brief sketches of habitats, from woodlands and wetlands to plains and coasts. It also places American species alongside related forms elsewhere, letting readers compare close kin across regions. Throughout, the emphasis is on careful observation and informed respect.
The opening chapters define what makes a mammal distinct, emphasizing warm blood, fur, and care of the young. Wright introduces basic terms for teeth, feet, and senses, showing how these features reveal diet and habits. She outlines the purpose of classification, explaining that animals are grouped into families and orders to reflect their shared structures and ways of life. Practical guidance invites readers to look for tracks, burrows, dens, and feeding marks, and to consider safety and restraint when meeting wild creatures. With these tools, the book turns to the animals themselves, proceeding from simpler types toward the larger and more specialized forms.
The first field portraits treat the opossum as America’s native marsupial, noting its nocturnal foraging, climbing tail, and secure pouch for the young. The narrative then considers small ground dwellers that feed on insects and worms, such as shrews and moles, highlighting their hidden tunnels and rapid lives. Night-flying bats appear next, introduced through their winged forelimbs, roosting habits, and appetite for insects. Wright includes armadillos among the older New World lines, describing their armor and digging. In each case, the text points out simple marks of presence, such as tracks, burrow plugs, or droppings, and relates the animal to similar kinds beyond the region.
A substantial section covers rodents and their near allies, emphasizing gnawing teeth and quick reproduction. Squirrels, chipmunks, and prairie dogs represent varied social arrangements and storage of food. Beavers receive special attention for their dams and lodges, which alter waterways and create refuge. Muskrats and woodchucks illustrate burrowing and winter survival. Porcupines show how spines deter enemies, while native mice and rats demonstrate adaptability in fields and barns. The separate group of hares and rabbits is distinguished from true rodents by subtle traits, with notes on nests, speed, and seasonal coats. Here, identification blends structure, sign, and the landscape each species shapes.
The carnivores begin with smaller and mid-sized kinds that often live near people. Raccoons are portrayed as dexterous opportunists, visiting streams and farms. Skunks, noted for their bold warning and scent, exemplify defensive strategies. The weasel tribe, including mink, martin, and otter, is treated through their sleek forms, fishing or hunting habits, and use of banks and hollow logs. Badgers and ringtails occupy drier ground, digging for rodents or fruit. Foxes introduce the dog line with their quick gait and varied diets, linking field edges and forest. These accounts stress dens, trails, and food remains as practical cues to presence.
Larger predators follow, with the wild cats defined by their retractile claws, stealth, and solitary ranges. Lynx and bobcat appear as forest hunters, while the panther or cougar stands for wider, wilder tracts. The dog family continues with wolves and coyotes, whose endurance, social calls, and pack habits are contrasted with solitary hunting. Bears form a separate branch, characterized by plant and animal foods, powerful limbs, and seasonal retreats. Range changes and cautionary examples note how persecution and habitat loss alter abundance. Yet the narrative centers on structure, track patterns, and characteristic behaviors that allow recognition without disturbance.
The hoofed mammals bring the book to the broad spaces of plains and mountains. Deer and their relatives are explained by antlers that are shed and regrown, with white-tailed deer, elk, moose, and caribou illustrating size, gait, and habitat differences. The pronghorn is presented as a unique American form, with permanent, sheathed horns and open-country speed. Bison represent great grazing herds and their historical contraction. Mountain sheep and goats show footing on cliffs and seasonal movements. Peccaries appear as pig-like browsers of warmer regions. Notes on herding, rut, and migration explain how these animals follow food and weather across expansive ranges.
To fulfill the promise of their kin, the text compares American mammals with related or convergent kinds in other lands, pointing out likenesses and differences shaped by climate and terrain. Arctic seals and sea lions share the coastlines with otters, while distant relatives such as camels, antelopes, and big cats are mentioned to frame families on a global map. Desert dwellers, tropical forest species, and tundra forms display alternative solutions to common needs. Brief contrasts with domestic cattle, horses, dogs, and cats clarify how long association with people has changed shape and habit, without confusing them with the native wild fauna.
The closing pages gather practical lessons for readers who wish to know mammals well. Suggestions emphasize quiet watching, respect for breeding seasons, and restraint in collecting, substituting notes and sketches for harm. Lists of field marks and simple keys reinforce the organization by orders and families, so that knowledge of one species helps with another. A final reminder stresses the value of protecting wild neighbors and the places they require, linking recognition with responsibility. In this way, the book completes its purpose: to give a clear, connected view of four-footed Americans, set among their world relations, and to guide thoughtful acquaintance.
Historical Context
Although not a novel with a single locale, Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin is situated in the North American continent as it existed at the turn of the twentieth century. Mabel Osgood Wright wrote from New England (Fairfield, Connecticut), but her depictions range from the Eastern woodlands and Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains and Southwest deserts. The book’s temporal frame is contemporary with its late-1890s publication, when railroads, farms, and towns were rapidly expanding while the first national parks and forest reserves were being established. Its “setting” is therefore the continent’s habitats and the lives of mammals adapting to an industrializing nation increasingly conscious of conservation.
The rise of the American conservation movement in the late nineteenth century provides essential context. Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, Yosemite and Sequoia in 1890, and the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 allowed presidents to set aside federal forest lands. The Boone and Crockett Club (founded 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell) advocated scientific game laws and habitat protection. Wright’s book mirrors these developments by describing mammals as parts of ecological communities and by urging observant, ethical engagement with wildlife—an implicit endorsement of the new idea that the nation’s fauna were public resources requiring protection and informed stewardship.
Progressive Era policy under Theodore Roosevelt (president 1901–1909) decisively shaped the milieu to which the book responds. The Lacey Act of 1900, sponsored by Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa, made it a federal offense to traffic in illegally taken wildlife across state lines, curbing rampant market hunting. The Division of Biological Survey (established within USDA in 1896 under C. Hart Merriam) standardized mammal taxonomy, distribution mapping, and economic assessments, influencing how popular works organized species. Roosevelt proclaimed Pelican Island in Florida a federal bird reservation in 1903, inaugurating the National Wildlife Refuge System; he also used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create national monuments and supported the transfer of forest reserves to the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 under Gifford Pinchot. The 1908 White House Conference of Governors on Conservation publicized sustained-yield management of wildlife, forests, and waters. Collectively, these measures institutionalized conservation as national policy with concrete tools—law enforcement, refuges, forests, and scientific survey. Wright’s text echoes these priorities: it emphasizes identification, life histories, ranges, and the moral case for protective law, presenting mammals as worthy of national concern. Her own activism—founding the Connecticut Audubon Society in 1898 and later establishing Birdcraft Sanctuary in Fairfield in 1914—links the book to a network of citizen conservation. While focused on mammals, its insistence on observation over collecting, respect for closed seasons, and warnings about unregulated commerce align closely with the Lacey Act’s logic and the Biological Survey’s data-driven approach, translating contemporary policy and science into accessible instruction for young readers.
The closing of the American frontier in 1890, declared by the U.S. Census Bureau, marked the end of a vast buffer between expanding industry and wildlife. Railroads (completed transcontinental in 1869) opened markets that enabled large-scale hide and meat hunts, most infamously the near-extermination of the American bison. From tens of millions, bison fell to fewer than 1,000 animals by the late 1880s; the Yellowstone herd dwindled to roughly 23 by 1902. Wright’s reverent treatment of large mammals, prairie communities, and migration corridors reflects this crisis, presenting the bison and its kin as emblems of a national inheritance imperiled by market forces.
The North American fur trade had reshaped mammal populations since the seventeenth century. The Hudson’s Bay Company (chartered 1670) and the American Fur Company (founded by John Jacob Astor in 1808) drove intensive beaver trapping, leading to regional collapses by the 1830s–1840s as silk hats replaced beaver felt in fashion and stocks declined. River otter, marten, fisher, and fox experienced similar pressures. By the late nineteenth century, many Eastern beaver populations had been extirpated and only slowly recovered with twentieth-century reintroductions. Wright’s discussion of aquatic mammals and riparian habitats implicitly critiques overharvest, explaining behaviors and ecological roles that argue for their restoration and regulated take.
The anti-plumage and anti-market-wildlife trade campaigns of the 1890s–1910s created a political atmosphere that encompassed mammal protection. Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall organized the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1896, and states began passing laws against plume sales; national coordination followed in 1905 with the National Association of Audubon Societies. The Lacey Act (1900) then targeted interstate wildlife commerce. Although birds sat at the movement’s center, mammals benefitted from the same logic restricting fashion-driven demand for animal parts. Wright’s youth-oriented natural history aligns with this reform: by cultivating admiration for living creatures instead of commodities, it reinforces the ethical basis for trade restrictions.
The nature-study movement in education shaped how the book presents science to the public. At Cornell, Liberty Hyde Bailey advanced nature study in the 1890s; Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study (1911) synthesized methods for classroom field observation. Simultaneously, museums such as the American Museum of Natural History (founded 1869 in New York) expanded mammal collections and public exhibitions. The federal Biological Survey’s distributional maps and keys standardized terms. Wright translates these trends into accessible taxonomy, life-history sketches, and regional narratives, encouraging direct observation over specimen collecting. This approach mirrors contemporary pedagogical reforms that sought to democratize science and instill civic responsibility toward wildlife.
The book functions as a social and political critique by exposing the consequences of unregulated exploitation—market hunting, fashion-driven trade, predator bounties—and by modeling a civic ethic of restraint. It challenges urban consumerism that converted animals into hats and rugs, questions frontier myths that justified extermination, and valorizes science-backed regulation and public lands. By addressing children and families, Wright democratizes conservation, shifting authority from elite sportsmen to household citizens, including women who were key organizers in Audubon circles. The volume thus critiques classed consumption and shortsighted resource extraction, advocating a national identity that includes stewardship of mammals and the habitats that sustain them.
Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin
I
IN THE PASTURE
T was circus day down at East Village. Not the common circus, with a Lion, Elephant, a cage or two of Monkeys, a fat clown turning somersaults, and a beautiful lady floating through paper hoops, but a real American circus—the Wild West Show, with its scouts, frontiersmen, Broncos, bucking Ponies, Indians, and Buffaloes.
Of course the House People at Orchard Farm made a holiday and went down to see the show, giving many different reasons for so doing. Dr. Hunter and Mr. Blake said it was their duty as patriotic Americans to encourage native institutions, and Mrs. Blake said that she must surely go to see that the young people did not eat too many peanuts and popcorn balls. The young people thought that going to the circus was a must be, unless one was ill, or had done something very, very wrong, that merited the severest sort of punishment. Mammy Bun, too, who had been groaning about pains in her bones for fully a week, took out her best black bonnet trimmed with a big red rose,—headgear that she only wore on great occasions,—saying:—
"Pears to me nuffin eber does ma reumatiz de heap o' good like hearin' a real circus ban' a playin'. Land alibe, honies! I feel so spry alreddy seems like I'se could do a caike walk dis yer minit."
*****
It was October. Everything looked cheerful at the farm. The maples were dressed in dazzling red and yellow; heaps of red and yellow apples lay under the orchard trees, and the house and barns wore a glistening new coat of yellow paint, with white trimmings and green blinds.
A deeper yellow shone from the fields where jolly pumpkins seemed to play hide-and-seek behind the corn stacks, which the children called wigwams when they played Indian. Everything looked as thrifty as if the outdoor season was beginning instead of nearly at an end; and well it might, for it had been many years since the old farm held such a family. There would be no closed blinds, leaf-choked paths, or snow-drifts left to bury the porch, this winter.
"Yes, the Chimney Swift was right," said the Meadowlark in the old field, to the Song Sparrow who was singing cheerfully in a barberry bush. "We shall be better off than before these House People came; they have already begun to scatter food in the barnyard, though there are enough gleanings about to last us citizens until snow comes. The village boys never think of coming up here now to shoot, as they used to every season when the wind began to blow cold"; and the Meadowlark flew to the top rail of the fence, boldly showing his yellow breast, and giving a note or two to tell how trustful he was.
"Where have you been all summer?" asked Comet, the young trotter, of the big brown farm horses, who had come to drink at the spring in the pasture below the barns. "It is so long since I have seen you I was afraid that you had been sold."
"Oh no, youngster!" replied Tom. "Jerry and I have only been summering up at the wood lots at the far end of the farm. We had our shoes off all the time, and could amuse ourselves as we liked. We never saw a harness or wagon; all the work we did was to roll in the grass or wade in the river to keep the flies off. The grazing up there was simply delicious, you know,—all sorts of relishing little bits of herbs mixed in with the grass.
"Now that we have had our rest, it is our turn to work, and gray Bess and Billy have gone to the paddock, and we have come to take their places. There is plenty to do on this farm in fall and winter, though it is very lonely. I can remember, when I was a four-year-old, that House People lived in the big barn with all the windows, and they used to ride over the snow in the low wagon without wheels, and we all had fine times together."
"There are fine times here now," said Comet, shaking his mane importantly; "but of course you do not know about them, because you have been away. House People are living here again. We all have great fun and the best of eating, with more picnics than ploughing for the horses. Children play about the farm, who feed me with bunches of pink clover and little lumps of nice-tasting stuff they call sugar. I mistrusted it at first, it looked so like the hard pebbles in the brook, but it chewed up all right when I nibbled some."
"You don't look as if you had been having half enough to eat, in spite of the good times," said Tom, pityingly. "Only look at your ribs. I can count every one of them. If you were harnessed to a plough, you would come apart at the very first pull. How could you drag a load of hay? As for working in the threshing-machine, those little feet of yours would catch between the slats. What use are thin horses, anyway?" concluded Tom, rather rudely, not realizing that his remarks were impolite, while Jerry looked proudly along his fat sides and pawed the ground with a hoof nearly as large as a dinner plate.
Comet was going to answer angrily and say something very saucy about clumsy work horses, but he stopped himself in time, being every inch a thoroughbred; for good breeding shows in the manners of animals as well as in House People.
"No," he answered after a moment, "I can't plough, nor drag a load, nor work the threshing-machine; but horses are made for different kinds of work. You do not think a cow useless because she gives milk instead of doing any sort of pulling, do you? Now I can drag the little wagon over to the railway station—where the great iron horse drags the string of covered wagons along the ground on the queer shiny fence rails—in half the time it takes you to go round the ten-acre lot. When I hear that horse coming, breathing hard and roaring, I prick up my ears, and you can hardly see my feet when they touch the road, for I do not want that great roaring horse to get there before I do. So the master is pleased, and always takes me. How would you like to go fast like that?" said Comet, smiling behind a bunch of grass.
"I couldn't go fast if I wanted to," said Tom, honestly. "I tried it once, when a plough-chain fell and banged my heels. They called it running away, I believe. My! how warm I was. Everything looked red as the sun in August, and a warm rain storm rolled off my coat on to the grass. That is what it seemed to me, but the farmer said, 'Tom is too fat and soft. See how he sweats!' and they skimped my dinner for a month."
"Well, then, to continue," said Comet. "We animals haven't been shut up all summer except in stormy weather; the bars have been down between all the best pastures. Even Sausage, the sow, and her nine little pigs, have been out walking every day, and her sty has had fresh bedding in it the same as if they were Cow or Horse People.
"We had so much freedom that I thought at first that there would be a great many fights, but we have all behaved beautifully. Even Nanny Baa, the stubborn old sheep, and Corney, the mischievous goat, have not butted any one or fought each other.
"We've had a chance to hear about the world and the other animals in it too, for a circus has been camping a few fields further down."
"I don't like a circus," interrupted Jerry, decidedly. "There are always a lot of bad-smelling, foreign beasts in cages with a circus, that a respectable farm fourfoot should not encourage. Then there is a terrible noise,—worse than milk-pans falling off the fence,—that they call a band; it makes me forget myself and dodge and dance all over the road. Yes, indeed, I well remember the first circus I ever heard. It came here when we were five-year-olds. Tom and I upset a load of cabbages, and they rolled all the way down Long Hill into the brook."
"There were no foreign wild beasts in this circus," said Comet, proud of his knowledge. "I put my head through the fence bars and had a fine chance to talk to some of the horses. There were several kinds of Horse Brothers there that I had never seen before; different even from the long-eared Donkey and Mule Brothers." Here Comet stopped, took a bite of grass and a drink of water, waiting to see if Tom and Jerry were interested.
They were, and as Comet looked up he saw that some of the other animals were coming down to drink,—Daisy, the finest cow in the herd, and Nanny Baa, sauntering all alone, the other sheep not having yet missed her, while Corney, the goat, whose whole name was Capricornus, danced about on a rock, charging at an imaginary enemy in the sky.
Tom, Jerry and Comet.
"What other horses did you see?" asked Tom and Jerry together, as the others came up.
"There were small horses, homely and thin, with straight necks and rolling eyes. Some of these were brown, and some all mixed brown and white. They ran up and down the field, clearing the old division fence at a jump. These were called Indian Ponies, and men they called Indians, with small eyes and dark rusty faces, rode on them for exercise. Beside these there were some others, called Burros, with longish ears, who did not seem to know how to either trot or run, and some of the small horses kept jerking and humping up their backs, so that the men could not ride them.
"Who told you all these names?" asked Tom, suspiciously.
"There was an old horse who did not work in the circus, but only helped draw wagons, who stayed by the fence and talked to me. He had seen a great deal of life in his day, and what do you think he said about those strange horses? That they were not born and raised on nice farms like you and me; that they came from the west country where they run wild until they are old enough to work, and they live in great flocks as the Crows do hereabouts. Every horse has a mark on his side, put there by the man who owns him. When they are young they have fine sport, but when it is time for them to work, men ride after them on swift horses and catch them by throwing a rope loop over their heads, and sometimes this hurts them very much, and they are also sorry to leave their friends.
"Out in the west country where these horses lived, the plains are full of fourfoots,—not Horse and Cow People,—but real wild fourfoots, strange as any of the Elephants or Lions. There are more kinds of them than you could ever dream of, even if you ate a whole bushel of oats for supper.
"The Horse said that they belong to older American families than any of us farm animals, and that once these four-footed Americans and the Red Indian Brothers, who lived in tents, owned all the country, and there were no real House People or farm fourfoots here at all."
"That must have been a long time ago," said Jerry. "I remember my grandmother, and she never said anything about wild people, and I never knew about any other animals but ourselves."
"Who am I, pray?" squealed a Squirrel, scampering along the fence. "How ignorant you are not to know that I belong to a very old family."
"You don't count," neighed Jerry. "I never thought you were an animal."
"Not an animal, hey? I will show you what a sharp-toothed animal I am, some fine day, and nibble up your dinner when you are asleep," and the Squirrel jumped over Jerry's back, and ran up a tree.
"My friend told me," continued Comet, "that some of those wild fourfoots are working for their living in this very circus. They are quite rare now, though they used to be as plentiful in the west pastures as ants in a hill. He showed me some of these beasts this very morning when they were being led down to the village."
"What did they look like?"
"Something like bulls, with low backs and great heavy heads, all bushy with thick brown wool. My friend said they are called Bison by the Wise Men; but in the circus and out where they used to live, every one calls them Buffaloes."
"I wonder if they are related to me?" said Daisy, who had joined the group.
"They are not as handsome as you, though they might belong to your family," said Comet, politely.
"Perhaps I may have some wild cousins," said Sausage, rooting up the turf. "I wonder what they eat?"
"I should like to go and meet my wild relations, if I have any," said Corney. "I wonder if they could beat me at butting and sliding down hill?"
"Humph, it is very strange about all these wild things," said Jerry. "I—My, they are making that bang noise again, down at the village!"
"That is the band. I think the circus is over," said Comet.
"Which Horse Brother dragged the people down there, and who went?" asked Daisy, who was always inquisitive.
"They all went, and they walked with their own feet, because the Doctor knows that we do not like smells and noises," said Comet. "They are coming back up the hill now. Nat is following 'way behind, carrying something. Ugh! It is a big snake, and he has it by the tail. I hate snakes; they look up so suddenly out of the grass when one is feeding, and they always seem to be by the nicest bunch of clover."
"Perhaps the people will stop here to rest, and we may hear something about our wild brothers," said Daisy.
"I think Dodo has sugar for me," said Comet to Tom and Jerry. "I will drop a piece, and you can pick it up, and see how you like it."
"Comet is quite a gentleman, if his ribs do show," muttered Tom to his companion, looking pleased, while the other animals lingered about the spring, waiting for the House People.
"Here are the horses that I haven't seen before from the grass farm; and Comet, too, and Daisy!" cried Dodo, climbing over the fence. "Please stop a bit, Uncle Roy, and let me give them some of my popcorn balls; I'm sure they will like them, and Corney simply loves peanuts."
"What did I tell you?" whispered Comet to Tom, as Dodo chirped for him to come to her.
II
THE ANIMAL TREE
OME up on the fence too, please, uncle," coaxed Dodo, and Dr. Hunter climbed over the pasture bars, seating himself on the fence in answer to her request to 'stop a bit while she fed the animals.' He motioned to Rap, who was rather tired with his walk, to come beside him, while Nat and Dodo divided the contents of their pockets into little heaps.
"Give the popcorn to Daisy and the horses," said Dodo. "The peanuts are for Corney; we can toss them up, and see him hop and scramble to catch them. It's lots of fun. Sausage can have all the mixed crumbs, 'cause she likes grubby things. Please, Nat, won't you bury your snake, or hang it up, or something? Whichever way I look, it seems to be too near."
"I'll hang it up on the tree, because I'm going to put it in a glass jar to keep. Daddy has gone back to the village to buy me some alcohol to pour on it."
"Ugh! what do you want it for? If I were you, I'd rather have the money the alcohol costs to buy a new butterfly net."
"Uncle Roy says it is as fine a rattlesnake as he ever saw. That is why he bought it off the man from the mountain, who killed it. There aren't any hereabouts now. A good thing, too, because they are biters; but I want it for my collection. I haven't many reptiles, you know; only a garter snake, two lizards, and a frog—whoa! Tom, eat fair; your mouth is twice as big as Comet's."
"How queer Daisy's tongue feels—it tickles my hand," said Dodo. "She licks everything into her mouth, but the horses take food in their lips. Uncle Roy, please come down here and see how queerly Daisy eats, and oh, my! she hasn't any top front teeth, either. Is she very old? Do look; her jaws wiggle as if she was chewing gum!"
"No, little girl; none of the Cow Family have any front upper teeth. A well-behaved cow sticks out her tongue with a sidewise motion to guide the grass into her mouth, while in the Horse Family the habit is to seize it with the lips, and then nip it between the teeth."
"Yes, but, uncle!" cried Nat, jumping hastily over the fence to dodge Corney, who was tired of eating peanuts one by one, and, giving a sudden butt, had seized bag and all; "Uncle Roy, cows are ever so fond of chewing. They eat all the morning, and then they go under the trees and chew, chew, chew, all the afternoon; but horses gobble their food once for all."
"I'm very glad you have noticed this, Nat. The cow is built upon a different plan from the horse. The horse has a complete set of upper and under teeth, and a single stomach—something like our own—to receive the food. The cow has four stomachs. When she eats, the food goes into the first stomach, where it stays a while to grow soft. After Daisy has filled this first stomach, she goes to rest for a while, brings up the softened food into her mouth, and chews it again. This softened food is called the 'cud.'"
"Oh, now I know what Rod meant," cried Dodo, clapping her hands, "when he said the cows were chewing their 'cud.' They were lying under the trees, and didn't seem to have anything near them to eat. I thought cud must be moss or something. Do any other of our animals beside cows have several stomachs and chew cud?"
"Yes, all the animals that belong to the Meat Family: Sheep and Goats, and, among their wild American brothers, the Deer and the very Buffalo that you saw at the show this afternoon."
"Were those strange beasts any relations of our farm animals?" asked the children in one breath.
"Were our farm animals once wild like the Buffaloes, and did they live far out West? Who first caught them and made them tame?" gabbled Dodo, only stopping when her breath failed.
"Our farm animals were never, in the true sense, natives of this country. In the far back days, before the pale-faced voyagers came to these shores, the Red Brothers had no horses to carry them, nor cows to give them milk. They followed the war-path and game-trail on foot, and their clothing and tent homes were made of the skins of the beasts they took with bow, arrow, and spear. Time was when they had not even spears and arrows.
"When the pale-faced settlers came to America they brought the useful animals from their old homes with them: pigs, sheep, horses, goats, cows, dogs, cats, etc.,—so though these have lived here as the people have, long enough to be citizens, they are not native or indigenous Americans any more than we ourselves. That distinction belongs to the Indian, Peccary, Buffalo, Musk Ox, Mountain Goat, Bighorn, Wolf, and Wildcat, who are the wild cousins of House People and their farm fourfoots. The horse alone has no living wild cousin here, though there were horses in America ages ago."
"Then those horses that the Indians rode at the show, who hopped around so, weren't really wild at all," said Nat, with a look of great disappointment. "They seemed really, truly wild, and how the Indians stuck on and dodged and fired their guns!"
"They are wild in the sense that they were born on the open prairie and lived in vast herds, but they are the great-grandchildren of tame horses. In the southwest, as well as in South America, vast herds of these horses, descended from those brought in by the Spanish, roamed at large. From time to time the Indians dashed into the troops and lassoed those that they desired and rode them as we saw the Indians do this afternoon, but they are not true four-footed Americans like that little Chipmunk over there, who is stealing a few peanuts that Corney overlooked, or like the sly, fat Woodchucks that we are trying to trap in the orchard."
"Please, Uncle Roy, can Dodo and I put halters on Tom and Jerry and see if we can ride them round the field without any saddles?" said Nat, looking fearlessly up at the big horses, whose mouths barely touched the top of his head.
"You can try, if you like," laughed the Doctor, "but I'm afraid it will be too hard travelling for Dodo. No, you will risk a bumping? Very well, then, but tell Rod to bring blankets and surcingles."
In a few minutes Rod came, strapped a folded blanket on each horse, and gave Nat Jerry's halter, but insisted upon keeping hold of Tom.
"Now, if I only had something to shoot with, we could play circus. Hoo-oo-ooh!" cried Nat, trying to imitate an Indian cry, at which sound Jerry galloped very quietly down the pasture, switching his tail. But to Nat it seemed as if he was seated on an earthquake, and he clutched Jerry's mane, whereupon the horse gave a little kick of surprise and cantered heavily back to the spring.
"I think T-o-m is falling to pieces," chattered Dodo, as Rod ran him round the pasture. "He—is—so—fat, too, my legs can't bend down;—I—guess I'll stop, please," and Rod swung her down to the wall beside her uncle.
"A circus isn't as easy as it looks," said Nat, wiping his face, and Rap laughed heartily and pounded his crutch on the fence.
"Farm horses are not saddle horses," said Comet to himself.
"I'm all mixed up about animals," said Dodo in a few minutes when she had caught her breath. "Our farm animals aren't real Americans, yet Daisy is a kind of cousin of the wild Buffalo, because she has no upper front teeth and chews a cud. Birds seem so much easier to understand. Birds are animals with a backbone, a beak for a mouth, and two legs. They wear feathers and lay eggs. But these others are different in their mouths and stomachs and feet, and some have horns and some don't. Some have little tails like Corney, and some long hairy tails like the horses, and oh, Uncle Roy, that snake there is all tail!
"Olive says bugs, and beetles, and flies, are animals, too, and beetles are crusty, and caterpillars are squashy, and flies are buzzy, and I'm sure I never can tell who is who. Birds look something alike, even when they are as different as a Hummingbird and a Duck; but I can't understand how all the other animals are related."
"Not so fast, dearie," said the Doctor, laughing at her inquiries until the tears ran down his cheeks. "The differences and the relationships of these animals are no harder to remember than they are among the birds. You know that with them their beaks and feet were arranged to suit their needs. Have you forgotten how we classified the birds, and the little table of the Animal Kingdom that you wrote?"
"Yes," said Nat, hesitating; "that is, I did know, but I've forgotten most of it."
"I remember," said Rap, "that you said classifying was to put the animals together that were the nearest alike, and the two great divisions of the Animal Kingdom were animals without backbones and animals with them."
"Olive says my sponge is an animal," said Dodo, doubtfully. "Surely it can't have any backbone, for if it did it would scratch my face; but then it was full of prickles when it was new, perhaps its backbone was crumpled up!"
"I must try to make this Animal Kingdom and its chief divisions more clear to you," said the Doctor, pausing a minute as he looked across the pasture. "Do you see that great chestnut tree yonder, with the thick trunk and wide-spreading branches?"
"Yes, indeed," said Rap, "and it bears the fattest, sweetest nuts of any tree hereabouts; but it takes a very hard frost to open them."
"I remember how good the nuts used to be, but now I want you all to notice the way in which the tree grows. Above ground there is a thick straight part which is called the trunk; then this soon divides into large branches. A little further up these thick branches separate into smaller branches yet, until they end in little slender twigs.
"The Animal Kingdom is like this tree in the way in which the different members all are developed side by side, interlacing and depending upon each other. It is difficult to tell some of the lowest branches of the animal tree from plants: as none of these animals of the first branches have any backbones, they are called Invertebrates, and their inside parts are held together in a little tube."
"Are birds on one of the high branches?" asked Dodo.
"Yes, one of the very highest, next to the great branch, where man himself sits, surrounded by all his faithful four-footed friends, just as he is when he walks about every day."
"Do House People and fourfoots belong on the same great branch?" said Rap, looking puzzled. "What is it called, please?"
"It is the Mammal branch, the highest of all, and it has so many little branchlets and twigs that it is large enough to be a tree all by itself."
"Exactly how are the other Mammals like us, and what does Mammal mean? Do they all have warm red blood like ours?" asked Dodo, who was celebrated for cutting her fingers.
"They all have warm red blood, but so have birds; there are other differences that you will learn later. The one thing that makes them Mammals is that they suckle their young with milk."
"M—mammals; m—milk," sang Dodo. "Why, that is as easy to remember as 'Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit'! Please tell us the names of some nearby Mammals, Uncle Roy."
"All the farm and house fourfoots are Mammals; also the wild Deer, Wolves, Foxes, Rats, Mice, Squirrels, Moles, Skunks, Weasels, and Woodchucks, beside many others you do not know even by name."
"So all those nuisance animals are Mammals too," said Dodo, meditatively.
"Nuisance animals! Which are those?" asked Rap.
"The naughty, bothersome ones that eat things and bite holes in the house, and dig up the orchard, and smell, oh, so bad! Why, Rap, don't you remember the evening we thought there was a black and white rooster by the orchard wall, and Quick and I tried to catch it, and it turned out to be a Skunk? Then my clothes had to be boiled so hard they were no more use, and Quick tried to get away from himself for almost two weeks."
"Oh, yes, I do. Mammals must have a great many shapes, Doctor," continued Rap, thoughtfully. "How are they made into families?—the same way as birds?"
"In very much the same way. To-night, after supper, I will draw you a picture of a part of this wonderful animal tree, and tell you the names of some of its branches, and perhaps you will remember a few of them. I do not wish to bother you with long words, but there are a few that you must learn.
"The history of this animal tree is the most interesting story in the world, and the Wise Men call it Zoölogy, after two Greek words that mean the 'history of animal life.'"
"Then that is the reason why an out-door menagerie is called a Zo-o-logical Garden," said Nat, stumbling a trifle over the word. "Daddy was reading to mother about such a beautiful garden for wild animals that is going to be made near New York,—the very biggest in the world,—so that every one in America can see how the animals live. Perhaps we can go there some day and see all the Mammals."
"Daisy gives milk, so I am very sure I know one Mammal anyway," said Dodo, who was growing a little tired. "Oh! oh!" she cried, suddenly jumping off the fence. "The sun is going down pop. I never noticed it, and Rod said I might help milk to-night. He's taking the cows in now. Won't you come and see me do it, Uncle Roy?"
"You help milk?" laughed Nat. "Who taught you how?"
"Rod; I've had four lessons, and I can milk almost a quart. Then my hands grow all weak and shaky, and Rod says it's enough for once, both for me and for the cow. Daisy is the only one that will let me."
"Poor, patient Daisy," laughed the Doctor. "To be sure we will come and see this famous milkmaid."
Dodo led the way to the cow barn, where each cow had a clean stall marked with her name. Then she tied a queer sort of apron round her waist, made, like Rod's, out of a meal sack, hunted for a small stool, also like Rod's, and prepared in a very businesslike manner to wash off Daisy's bag with a sponge and some clean water.
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried the Doctor. "My little farmer has already learned that everything about milk, from the animal to the pans, should be very clean."
"Zig-zig-zig-zig," said the milk, spattering on the bottom of the pail. In a few minutes the spattering stopped.
"Now it's beginning to purr like a cat," explained Dodo. "It does that when the milk begins to fill up a little."
Dodo kept bravely at it until her fingers, now red and tired, had coaxed about a quart from Daisy.
"That will go for to-night," she said, "though I'm sure I milked more last time. I'm dreadfully thirsty; suppose we drink this now, Uncle Roy. There's a glass by the well, Nat,"—and the milk rapidly disappeared.
"M—mammals; m—milk," sang Dodo, skipping ahead toward the house, as the short twilight hurried after the sun.
"I wish the days were longer," sighed Rap, turning to go home.
"But evening with a wood fire in the wonder room is lovely," sang Dodo, "and to-night uncle he, will draw a tree,"—she sang; then stopped and laughed at her rhyme.
"Uncle Roy," she whispered, "it's been such a happy day, can we have Rap to help finish off by toasting crackers in the wonder room, and see you draw the animal tree? Yes? I'll give you a bear's hug!"
"I reckon there will be a frost to-night," said Rod, passing on his way to the house with the milk-pail.
"Frost!" shouted Nat, dancing round in glee. "Frost—chestnuts, Rap,—and to-morrow will be Saturday!"
*****
"How do you like this?" said Comet, looking up from his oats over to Tom and Jerry, as the stable door closed with a click. "Box stalls and two bundles of clean straw apiece, and warm bran mash for you beside. Did you ever have anything as nice as this where you were this summer?"
"I think the House People here understand a horse's feelings," answered Jerry, plunging his nose into his supper.
III
WAFFLES AND A WALK
AMMY BUN cooked a delicious supper for the children that night, for the circus had put her in extra good humor.
As it was the first of the really cool evenings, she surprised them with hot cocoa in the place of their usual glasses of milk, and there was cream toast, and cold chicken and tongue sliced daintily together.
The children had famous appetites, and Mr. Blake said he expected by spring they would all be as fat as Sausage herself.
"Not if you carry out all the plans I have for making you work and keeping you out-of-doors," said the Doctor.
"What? What are we going to do? Is there a surprise?" asked Dodo eagerly, reluctantly setting down her teacup. "School takes so much time and the rest of it is nearly all dark. Oh! I smell waffles!"
"What is nearly all dark,—the school, or the time, or the waffles?" asked the Doctor, as soon as the laugh, caused by Dodo's mixed-up sentences, had stopped.
"I mean that night comes nowadays very soon after we come home from school. Why are the days so short in winter, Uncle Roy, just when we need the sun to warm us, and so long and hot in summer when we want to be cool?"
"Why, it's the other way round," said Rap; "it is because the sun stays up so long in spring and summer that the days are warm, and because it comes so late, and hurries to bed, that the days are cold."
"But why does the sun stay longer some times than others? Why need the days ever be so very short?"
"Your supper would grow cold if I stopped to explain," said the Doctor. "Some day we must make ourselves into a class in astronomy and learn how the sun, moon, and stars all go bowling about in the sky, and how the old earth looked when she was young."
"There is the moon now. Oh, how fat it is to-night," said Dodo, looking toward a window where the curtains had not been drawn.
"The hunter's moon," said Mr. Blake, "and many a good time I've had by the light of it."
"Why is it called hunter's moon, daddy," asked Dodo, "and what did you do with the light of it?"
"It is the moon that comes in October when all the game birds and wild food and fur beasts are through raising their families, and it is fair for House People who need fur or food to go and hunt them."
"Did you ever need food and fur, daddy?" persisted Dodo.
"Yes, sometimes I really did; and should have starved except for my gun and what it brought me; and sometimes perhaps I thought I did," said Mr. Blake, looking at the Doctor, who was shaking with laughter.
"Did you ever shoot anything just to see if you could hit it?" asked Nat.
"Yes; I'm afraid I did often, before I had travelled over the wild west country and learned for myself that shooting food and fur beasts to 'see what you can hit,' is making this wonderful land of ours as bare of four-footed things as it will be of birds."
"Say, Mis' Cherry, can de young uns hab a spoon o' jam 'long o' dere waffles?" asked Mammy Bun in what was meant to be a whisper, popping her head in at the door.
"I'm afraid not to-night, mammy," said Mrs. Blake, whose girlish name of Cherry, mammy still used. "We should have the children dreaming of Buffaloes and Indians and rolling out of bed. Waffles are quite enough."
"But Mammy Bun's waffles are such well-behaved things that they never hurt anybody," said Olive.
"Yes," echoed Dodo, "mammy says it's all in the beating up; if you beat waffles ever so hard when you're making them, they'll never talk back after you eat them. I know something that does talk back, though—it's turnips if you eat them raw like apples, and chew rather quick and then drink water. Oh, it was dreadful!"
"So, missy has been having indigestion, has she?" laughed the Doctor.
"Yes; if that name means that inside your chest is too big for your skin. What makes indigestion, Uncle Roy?"
"Indigestion comes when the food you eat is not of the right kind or quality for your stomach mill to turn into good flesh and blood. Then it stays in the mill, swelling up, growing stale and sour, choking up the little wheels, and souring the wheel grease that helps them move, causing pain and sickness, until it is turned out in some way. That is the reason why we should be careful what we put into the mill.
"To make sure that mammy's waffles do not grumble, suppose we all take a little walk down the road before we go into the wonder room to draw the animal tree. Come, Cherry," said the Doctor, drawing Mrs. Blake's hand through his arm, "you, too. I'm not going to have you stay in the house all the time. We need you, and you need the fresh air to give you back the red cheeks that gave you your pet name. Olive, dear, please get your aunt's warm wrap—never mind gloves; here is a coat-pocket for each hand," and the procession stepped out into the bright moon path.
"There will be no frost until this wind dies down," said Mr. Blake.
"What nice clean shadows the trees make," said Olive, after they had walked in silence down a lane that led from the turnpike toward the pastures and spring.
"Hush! what was that?"
"A bird, maybe, that was sleepy and fell off its perch."
"No, a Flying Squirrel," whispered the Doctor. "There it goes!" and on looking up they saw a dark object, a little larger than a Chipmunk, half spring, half drop from a birch tree on one side of the lane to a maple on the opposite side.
"Can Squirrels fly? I thought only birds could do that," whispered Dodo, awe-struck.
"Look yonder, but keep very still," said Mr. Blake, holding back some branches that hid the view of the spring.
"It is a little dog drinking," said Nat. "What a bushy tail he has. See, he is going over toward the barns; perhaps he is a friend of Quick, or Mr. Wolf."
"No, it is a Fox, and he is going to see where the chickens live."
"A Fox!" screamed Dodo, forgetting the need for silence. "A real wild animal! Oh, uncle, do let us catch it!"
"I very much wish you would," said the Doctor, as the Fox raised one paw, sniffed the air, and disappeared like magic between some low bushes.
"He is the most cunning of our beasts, and if the wind had been the other way, he would not have given us even this peep at him."
"What difference does the wind make?" asked Nat. "Is he afraid of it?"
"I know," said Rap; "for before my leg was hurt I went often with the miller and his dog to hunt Foxes that stole his turkeys. Little wild beasts look for food mostly at night, or late in the afternoon, or early in the morning, when it isn't so easy to see, so they use their smeller to tell them a great many things that they can't see with their eyes. They can smell so well that if the wind was blowing from us to them they would know we are here and would run away."
"That is right, my lad," said the Doctor. "The wild beasts have a much keener sense of smell and hearing than we House People, and you will do well when you wish to watch even a Squirrel to keep from stepping on a dry leaf and to see which way the wind blows."
"Only think, we've seen a real wild animal," chuckled Dodo to Nat.
"I've seen a Coon and a Muskrat and a Mink," said Rap, "besides Foxes and Squirrels."
"I know what Mink is," said Dodo; "it's nice brown fur, and I have some of it on my winter coat.
"Uncle Roy is going to take us to the old log camp in the Owl woods some day, and there are fur beasts up around there, he says."
"Daddy has been all about the wild west country on business, and he has seen dreadful fierce, wild animals, and he is going to tell us about them by and by. You know daddy goes round to find out about the country and look for mines that are hidden in the ground," explained Nat to Rap, "and that's why we haven't seen much of him for a long time. You see mines are often in very savage places, and now daddy is staying here this winter to write down all he has seen and draw plans for people to work by in the spring."
"Oh, then your father is a miner," said Rap; "I've read about them."
"No, a miner is the man that digs with a pick and shovel; daddy is the one who digs with his brain and tells the miner how to work so that the earth won't fall in on him, and how to cut away the rock and get to the treasure. Daddy is what they call a Mining Engineer!" and Nat stopped suddenly, as if the two big words were too much for him.
"Some day I suppose you will go with him and see all these things. It is nice to have two legs," said Rap, half sadly, looking at his crutch.
"Never mind; we will be partners. I will go out and hunt, and you shall write the book about it the way uncle does, for I don't like to write."
"I do," said Rap, cheering up; "that will be splendid."
"Don't try to walk through the fence," said Olive.
Then the children found that they had been so busy talking that they did not realize they were walking back toward the farm, until they had bumped into the front fence instead of opening the gate.
The log fire in the wonder room was not a bit too warm, and as they gathered around it Mr. Wolf and Quick came in from the kitchen licking their lips, as if they had been so busy with supper that they had not missed their friends.
Wolf settled himself at Mrs. Blake's feet with all the dignity of a St. Bernard, but Quick kept prancing and springing from one to another with Fox-Terrier nervousness.
"In the spring when we began to learn about birds, I told you a few facts about their bones and feathers, the way in which they were made and for what they were useful," said Dr. Roy, sitting at his desk and tipping back his chair. "We found the bird was a good American citizen, and I think you feel now as if you really had a bowing acquaintance with some of these feathered folk."
"Yes," said Dodo. "I forget some things you said about them for a while, and then I remember again. We saw a Screech Owl in the woods yesterday, and I remembered its name right off, and that it was one of the good Owls that mustn't be shot."
"Good girl, that encourages your old uncle to tell you more stories this winter about some of the other creatures that are branches of the wonderful animal tree."
Nat and Rap brightened up, and Olive said she could not imagine anything pleasanter for winter evenings.
"But we have to do our lessons in the evenings," said Nat, dolefully.
"Uncle Roy will manage it somehow," said Dodo, shaking her head confidently; "there is a surprise somewhere, I know. I've been expecting it." At this Mr. and Mrs. Blake and the Doctor smiled, but said nothing.
"Uncle Roy," persisted Dodo, after a pause, "won't you do as you did with the birds, and tell us about the wild American animals instead of about menagerie beasts, and then make us a book about them? There must be as many as fifty kinds of usual animals in America, counting all those in the west country. I'm so tired of menagerie beasts—
that was on my picture blocks when I was a little child. I had picture books of Cockatoos and other strange birds, too, but they never seemed to mean anything until you told us about our American birds."
"You are right, Dodo," said the Doctor, "and you have given me some new ideas for my surprise. Yes, there is a surprise hiding somewhere near! We are to have a winter camp here at the farm, and the stories told at the campfire shall all be about four-footed Americans, with a few about some no-footed and wing-handed ones thrown in."
