Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/218

Rh drawings alone can give everything you can perceive; but they fail in authentic size and detail.

Photography has this great advantage—it gives the surroundings, the essential landscape and setting, and, therefore, the local reason for any changes of action on the part of the animal; also the æsthetic beauties of its records are unique, and will help to keep the method in a high place.

Thus each of the three means may be successful in a different way, and the best, most nearly perfect alphabet of the woods, would include all three, and consist of a drawing, a pedoscript and a photograph of each track, and a trail; i.e., a single footprint, and the long series of each animal.

My practice has been to use all whenever I could, but still I find free-hand drawing is the one of the most practical application. When I get a photograph I treasure it as an adjunct to the sketch.

A Story of the Trail

To illustrate the relative value as records, of sketch and photograph, I give a track that I drew from nature, but which could not at any place have been photographed. This was made in February 15, 1885, near Toronto. It is really a condensation of the facts, as the trail is shortened where uninteresting. Page 189, No. 2.

At A, I found a round place about 5 × 8 inches, where a cottontail had crouched dur/ng the light snow/all. At B he had leaped out and sat looking around; the small prints in front were made by his forefeet, the two long ones by his hind feet, and farther back is a little dimple made by the tail, showing that he was sitting on it. Something alarmed him, causing him to dart out at full speed toward C and D, and now a remarkable change is to be seen: the marks made by the front feet are behind the large marks made by the hind feet, because the rabbit overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes place in most bounding animals.

Now the cottontail began a series of the most extraordinary leaps and dodgings (D,E,F.) as though trying to escape from some enemy. But what enemy? There were no other tracks. I began to think the rabbit was crazy—was flying from an imaginary foe—that possibly I was on the trail of a March hare. But at G I found for the first time some spots of blood.