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[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-destroying
concussions made by the breaking of the cable during rush hours morning
and evening.

“What you need,” said this gifted scientist to me, “is absolute rest and
quiet. If you do not pack up and take to the woods within three days
from the receipt of this notice, I will not answer for the consequences.
Your brain is slowly but surely giving way. Your batteries are becoming
exhausted and must be renewed if measurable currents are to be expected.
I recommend new cells, rather than recharging from a dynamo. Get busy
now, and let me see you no more until September first.”

Face to face with my death warrant, as it were, I unhesitatingly obeyed.
Fortunately, my grandmother had left me a small log cabin in a clearing,
this being her ancestral domicile and the only piece of real estate she
possessed at the time of her long-delayed demise some months back.
Without waiting to inspect it, I hurried to my new home, accompanied
only by a few books on Natural History—which, as I afterward discovered,
were by ignorant and untrustworthy writers, seeking to prey upon the
credulity of the uninstructed public,—and Tom-Tom, my Cat.

I had not intended to take Tom-Tom, but his fine animal instinct warned
him of my impending departure, and he sat upon my bookcase and wailed
piteously all through my packing. My foolish heart has always been
strangely tender toward the lower animals, and I hastened to reassure
Tom-Tom. After a little, I made him understand that wherever I went he
should go also, and he frisked about my apartment like a wild thing at
play, waving his tail madly in the exuberance of his joy.

Among the ignorant, the waving of a tail by any member of the Cat family
is taken to mean anger. According to my own observations, it may also
indicate joy. Darwin has distinguished several canine emotions which are
distinctively expressed in the bark. Correlatively, I have tabulated
eight emotions expressed by the _caudalis appendagis felinis_, according
to the method of waving it—down, up, right, left, twice to the right,
once to the left, then up, and so on. These discoveries I reserve for a
future article, as I began to tell about Little Upsidaisi.

When I reached my home in the wilderness, it was nearly nightfall. I had
only time to unpack my books, place them upon a rough shelf I hastily
constructed, draw out the rude table which happened to be in a corner of
my cabin, and place upon it my observation ledger, my pocket note-book,
and my red and maltese inks.

Tom-Tom watched my proceedings with great interest, and after I had
built my camp-fire, just outside the cabin door, we ate our frugal meal
of bologna, wienerwursts, pretzels, and canned salmon, relying upon the
cracker-box for bread, which Tom-Tom did not seem to care for. I was too
tired to make either bread or coffee, but promised myself both for
breakfast the following morning.

Before retiring, I made a pilgrimage to the beach and secured nearly a
peck of fine sand. I scattered this all about my cabin, that in the
morning I might see what visitors had left their cards, so to speak,
upon this tell-tale medium of communication.

My first night in the clearing was uneventful. The unusual quiet kept me
awake, and I thought that if someone would only pound a tin pan under my
window, I could soon lose consciousness. The Cat purred methodically in
the hollow of my arm, but even with the noise of my Tom-Tom in my ears,
it was four o’clock, according to my jewelled repeater, before I finally
got to sleep.

When I awoke, it was broad day, and after dressing hurriedly, I ran out
to look at the sand, which the Cat had not disturbed, being sound asleep
still. Poor Tom-Tom! Perhaps he, too, found a cabin in the wilderness an
unusual resting place.

Much to my delight, though hardly to my surprise, the sand was covered
with a fine tracery, almost like lace-work. The prints of tiny toes were
to be discovered here and there, and now and then a broad sweep,
evidently made by a tail.

I would have thought it the work of fairies, dancing in the moonlight,
had I not dedicated my life to Science. As it was, I surmised almost
instantly that it was the Field Mouse—the common species, known as
_rodentia feminis scarus_, and reference to my books proved me right.

By measuring the prints, according to the metric system, with delicate
instruments I had brought for the purpose, I soon discovered that these
tracks were all made by the same individual. The Bertillon method has
its uses, but unfortunately I was not sufficiently up in my calling, as
yet, to reconstruct the entire animal from a track. I have since done
it, but I could not then.

Tom-Tom came out into the sunlight, waving his glorious, plumed tail,
yawning, and loudly demanding food. I called him to me, using the old,
familiar Cat-call which I have always employed with the species, and the
faithful pet made a great bound toward me. Suddenly he stopped, as if
caught on a foul half-way to the grand stand, and began to sniff
angrily. His back arched, his tail enlarged, and began to wave in a
circle. Great agitation possessed Tom-Tom, and he, too, was scrutinising
the sand.

Wondering at his fine instinct, I hastened to his side, and, thereupon,
my pet unmistakably hissed. It required a magnifying-glass and some
reconstruction of line before I could make out what had so disturbed
him, but at last I discovered that a rude picture of a Cat had been
drawn in the sand, evidently by a tail tipped with malice, immediately
in front of my cabin door!

Truth compels me to state that the hideous caricature was not unlike
Tom-Tom in its essential lines. No wonder he was angry! Before I could
get a photograph of the spot, however, Tom-Tom had clawed it out of
existence. Nothing remained but to soothe his ruffled feelings, which I
did with a fresh Fish newly caught from the lake.

During the day, I meditated upon my nocturnal visitor. Evidently he had
drawn the Cat in the sand as a warning to others of his kind, as some
specimens of the genus _homo_ mark gate-posts. That night I made the
sand smooth before retiring, and in the morning I looked anxiously for
further messages, but there was nothing there. A charm had evidently
been set against my cabin door.

I began to consider getting rid of Tom-Tom, feeling sure that the Mice
would know it if I did so, but after long study, I concluded that it was
better to keep my faithful companion than to wait in loneliness for
problematical visitors.

The health-giving weeks passed by, and I gained in strength each day.
When I went there, I was so weak that I could not have spanked a baby,
but I soon felt equal to discharging a cook.

Frequently I went far away from the cabin, in the search for food and
firewood, leaving Tom-Tom at home to keep house. The intelligent animal
missed me greatly, but seldom offered to go along, his padded feet not
being suited to the long overland journeys. I made him some chamois-skin
boots out of some of the Natural History Shams I found in print, and,
for a few times, he gallantly accompanied me, but it soon became evident
that he preferred to stay at home and bear his loneliness, rather than
to face dangers that he knew not of.

When I returned from my hunting trips with a string of Fish, a