Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/212

Rh hours, and may be too faint even for an expert with present equipment to follow, but evidently the trail is made, wherever the creature journeys afoot.

Third.—It varies with every important change of impulse, action, or emotion.

Fourth.—When we find a trail we may rest assured that, if living, the creature that made it is at the other end. And if one can follow, it is only a question of time before coming up with that animal. And be sure of its direction before setting out; many a novice has lost much time by going backward on the trail.

Fifth.—In studying trails one must always keep probabilities in mind. Sometimes one kind of track looks much like another; then the question is, "Which is the likeliest in this place."

If I saw a jaguar track in India, I should know it was made by a leopard. If I found a leopard in Colorado, I should be sure I had found the mark of a cougar or mountain lion. A wolf track on Broadway would doubtless be the doing of a very large dog, and a St. Bernard's footmark in the Rockies, twenty miles from anywhere, would most likely turn out to be the happen-so imprint of a gray wows foot. To be sure of the marks, then, one should know all the animals that belong to the neighborhood.

These facts are well known to every hunter. Most savages are hunters, and one of the early lessons of the Indian boy is to know the tracks of the different beasts about him. These are the letters of the old, old writing.

A First Try

Let us go forth into the woods in one of the North-eastern states when there is a good tracking snow, and learn a few of these letters of the wood alphabet.

Two at least are sure to be seen—the track of the blarina and of the deer mouse. They are shown on the same scale in Figs. 1 and 2, page 198.

In Fig. 3 is the track of the meadow mouse. This is not unlike that of the blarina, because it walks, being a ground animal, while the deer mouse more often bounds. The delicate lace traceries of the masked shrew, shown in Fig. 4, are almost invisible unless the sun be low; they are difficult to draw, and impossible to photograph or cast satisfactorily but the sketch gives enough to recognize them by.

The meadow mouse belongs to the rank grass in the lowland