see this; his own
stable or kennel, his own dog or cat will be likely to reveal the
startling brutality at the first good opportunity.

An indiscriminate love for all animals, likewise, is not the best
sentiment to cultivate toward creation. Black snakes in a land of
birds, sharks in the bluefish rips, rabbits in Australia, and
weasels everywhere are out of place in the present economy of
nature. Big owls and hawks, representing a yearly destruction of
thousands of good game birds and of untold innocent songsters,
may also be profitably studied with a gun sometimes instead of
an opera-glass. A mink is good for nothing but his skin; a red
squirrel--I hesitate to tell his true character lest I spoil too
many tender but false ideals about him all at once.

The point is this, that sympathy is too true a thing to be
aroused falsely, and that a wise discrimination, which recognizes
good and evil in the woods, as everywhere else in the world, and
which loves the one and hates the other, is vastly better for
children, young and old, than the blind sentimentality aroused by
ideal animals with exquisite human propensities. Therefore I
wrote the story of Kagax, simply to show him as he is, and so to
make you hate him.

In this one chapter, the story of Kagax the Weasel, I have
gathered into a single animal the tricks and cruelties of a score
of vicious little brutes that I have caught red-handed at their
work. In the other chapters I have, for the most part, again
searched my old notebooks and the records of wilderness camps,
and put the individual animals down just as I found them.

Wm. J. Long.

Stamford, September, 1900.

CONTENTS.

I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER

II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE

III. KAGAX THE BLOODTHIRSTY

IV. KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES THE WRONG RAT

V. CHIGWOOLTZ THE FROG

VI. CLOUD WINGS THE EAGLE

VII. UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW

VIII. HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES

I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER.

[Illustration: Megaleep]

Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His
Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the
Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and
fearless, that is tr