Excerpt from The Watchers of the Trails: A Book of Animal Life There is one more point which may seem to claim a word. A very distinguished author - to whom all contemporary writers on nature are indebted, and from whom it is only with the utmost diffidence that I venture to dissent at all has gently called me to account on the charge of ascribing to my ani mals human motives and the mental processes of man. The fact is, however, that this fault is one which I have been at particular pains to guard against. The psychological processes of the ani mals are so simple, so obvious, in comparison with those of man, their actions flow so directly from their springs of impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives which are at any one moment impelling them. In my desire to avoid alike the melodramatic, the visionary, and the sen timental, I have studied to keep well within the limits of safe inference. Where I may have seemed to state too confidently the motives underlying the special action of this or that animal, it will usually be found that the action itself is very fully pre sented; and it will, I think, be further found that the motive which I have here assumed affords the most reasonable, if not the only reasonable, explana tion of that action. C. G. D. R. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.