The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ways of Wood Folk, by William J. Long

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Title: Ways of Wood Folk

Author: William J. Long

Illustrator: Charles Copeland

Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18193]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

WAYS OF WOOD FOLK

BY

WILLIAM J. LONG

_FIRST SERIES_

[Illustration]

BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenaeum Press
1902

COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY WILLIAM J. LONG

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO PLATO, the owl, who looks
over my shoulder as I write, and
who knows all about the woods.

PREFACE.

"All crows are alike," said a wise man, speaking of politicians. That
is quite true--in the dark. By daylight, however, there is as much
difference, within and without, in the first two crows one meets as in
the first two men or women. I asked a little child once, who was
telling me all about her chicken, how she knew her chicken from twenty
others just like him in the flock. "How do I know my chicken? I know
him by his little face," she said. And sure enough, the face, when you
looked at it closely, was different from all other faces.

This is undoubtedly true of all birds and all animals. They recognize
each other instantly amid multitudes of their kind; and one who
watches them patiently sees quite as many odd ways and individualities
among Wood Folk as among other people. No matter, therefore, how well
you know the habits of crows or the habits of caribou in general,
watch the first one that crosses your path as if he were an entire
stranger; open eyes to see and heart to interpret, and you will surely
find some new thing, some curious unrecorded way, to give delight to
your tramp and bring you home with a new interest.

This individuality of the wild creatures will account, perhaps, for
many of these Ways, which can seem no more curious or startling to the
reader than to the writer when he first discovered them. They are,
almost entirely, the records o