



Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)






[Illustration:

  “She made them gallop around an imaginary ring.”

  See page 79.]




                     The Book of Clever

                             Beasts


                  Studies in Unnatural History


                                   By

                              Myrtle Reed

                      Illustrated by Peter Newell

                      [Illustration: wolf drawing]

                          G. P. Putnam’s Sons
                          New York and London
                        The Knickerbocker Press
                                  1904




                           _By_ Myrtle Reed

                                      ---

                    Love Letters of a Musician
                    Later Love Letters of a Musician
                    The Spinster Book
                    Lavender and Old Lace
                    Pickaback Songs
                    The Shadow of Victory
                    The Master’s Violin
                    The Book of Clever Beasts

                   [Illustration: cat drawing]




                           COPYRIGHT, 1904
                                   BY
                            MYRTLE REED

                        Published, October, 1904

                     [Illustration: crow drawing]




                              Dedicated to
                            Lovers of Truth
                               Everywhere

                     [Illustration: owl drawing]




                                CONTENTS


                 CHAPTER                                       PAGE

                      I. LITTLE UPSIDAISI                         1

                     II. JAGG, THE SKOOTAWAY GOAT                22

                    III. SNOOF                                   51

                     IV. KITCHI-KITCHI                           82

                      V. JIM CROW                               108

                     VI. HOOP-LA                                136

                    VII. JENNY RAGTAIL                          168

                   VIII. HOOT-MON                               198

                     IX. APPENDIX                               225

[Illustration: bear drawing]




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                  PAGE

 “She made them gallop around an imaginary ring”        _Frontispiece_

 “Instinctively, I followed them”                                   20

 “There was something very human in the grateful                    36
   look he gave me just before closing his eyes”

 “Her little hand rested confidingly in his great                   68
   paw”

 “She arrived on the fair, open page of my                          94
   observation ledger, sooty, panting, but
   thoroughly happy”

 “Put the crotch under his wing, and with this                     116
   improvised crutch, went back to the cabin”

 “Hoop-La sat beside me, with her hands on her                     154
   sides, rocking and swaying in a spasm of
   merriment”

 “In plain sight of the whole school, punished him                 186
   severely with a lady’s slipper”

 “Coquetting like lovers on a moonlight night”                     204

[Illustration: rabbit drawing]




                              BIBLIOGRAPHY


Although practically all the Nature Books of recent years have been
carefully studied in order to gather material for this volume, the
author desires to make grateful acknowledgment of her indebtedness to
the following works, which have proved particularly helpful and
suggestive:

 JOHN BURROUGHS:
     _Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers._
     “Real and Sham Natural History,” _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1903.

 WILLIAM DAVENPORT HULBERT:
     _Forest Neighbours._

 ERNEST INGERSOLL:
     _Wild Life of Orchard and Field._

 WILLIAM J. LONG:
     _A Little Brother to the Bear._
     _Beasts of the Field._
     _Ways of Wood Folk._
     _Wood Folk at School._
     _Secrets of the Woods._
     _Wilderness Ways._
     “The Modern School of Nature Study and its Critics,” _North
        American Review_, May, 1903.

 CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS:
     _The Heart of the Ancient Wood._
     _The Kindred of the Wild._

 ERNEST THOMPSON-SETON:
     _Wild Animals I Have Known._
     _Lives of the Hunted._

 MASON A. WALTON:
     _A Hermit’s Wild Friends._

[Illustration: duck drawing]




                       THE BOOK OF CLEVER BEASTS

                         [Illustration: goat drawing]




                            LITTLE UPSIDAISI


I shall never forget the day I first saw him! That, indeed, was a day to
be marked in my note-book with a red cross. I kept red ink and maltese
ink in my cabin, to be used when things did or did not happen, as the
case might be. By this simple method I was enabled to keep track of the
notes suitable for the magazines which pay the best, reserving the
others for the periodicals which reimburse their army of contributors at
the starvation rate of a cent a word, no distinction being made between
long and short words. It is depressing, when you think of it, that a
long scientific name brings no more than a plain Anglo-Saxon word in one
syllable, and that only a cent apiece is paid for new words coined for
the occasion and which have never before been printed in any book.

But I digress. It was early in the Spring when my physician said to me:
“My dear Mr. Johnson-Sitdown, you are getting dashed dotty.” This was a
pleasing allusion to my employment, for, as the discerning reader has
long since guessed, I was a telegraph operator in a great city, where
the click of the instrument was superadded to the roar of the elevated
trains, the rumble of the surface cars, and the nerve-destroy