Forest Neighbors Life Stories of Wild Animals   By: William Davenport Hulbert (1868-1913)

"And the Northern Lights come down, To dance with the houseless snow; And God, Who clears the grounding berg, And steers the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit fox, And the lemming, on the snow."

RUDYARD KIPLING.

[Illustration: The Beaver Lumbering. ]

FOREST NEIGHBORS

Life Stories of Wild Animals

by

WILLIAM DAVENPORT HULBERT

Illustrated

Doubleday, Page & Co. Garden City New York 1914

Copyright, 1900, 1901, and 1902, by the S. S. Mcclure Co.

Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

To my Sister KATHARINE GRACE HULBERT

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION xi

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER 1

THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM 41

THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX 83

POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL 125

THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON 163

THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK 199

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Beaver Lumbering Frontispiece

PAGE

"On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn afternoon" 6

Building the Dam 22

Nesting Grounds 62

"He tried jumping out of the water" 72

"The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in" 100

"He was a very presentable young lynx" 110

"They both stood still and looked at each other" 120

"High up in the top of a tall hemlock" 132

"He quickly made his way to the beach" 148

"He went under as simply as you would step out of bed" 166

"She herself was a rarely beautiful sight" 170

"The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour" 180

"He was a baby to be proud of" 202

"The buck was nearing the prime of life" 226

"Wherever they went they were always struggling and fighting" 230

INTRODUCTION

Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were clothed with a splendid growth of beech, maple and birch. Tall elms stood guard along the water's edge, and here and there the hardwood forest was broken by dark hemlock groves, and groups of lordly pine trees, lifting their great green heads high above their deciduous neighbors. Only in one place, around the extreme eastern end, the ground was flat and wet; and there the tamarack swamp showed golden yellow in October, and light, delicate green in late spring. Wild morning glories grew on the grassy point that put out from the northern shore, and in the bays the white water lilies were blossoming. Nearly two miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking and shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beautiful sheet of water set down in the very heart of the woods.