Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt:...with fear. They have no nerves! With dogs and men you can corner a goat on a ledge and hold him there for an hour or two. He will get very angry and grit his teeth, and perhaps kill several of your dogs, but he will not get "rattled," and he will neither fall off nor leap off to certain death, as any deer surely will do under such circumstances. There are some men, and also some animals, who do not become panicstricken, even when they are being killed, and of the latter, I think the mountain goat is one. We like a "nervy" man or a "nervy" animal, which in common parlance means, an individual without nerves; fifty years ago the grizzly bear was an animal which knew not fear of any living thing, and then he was great. Today the grizzly is a quitter. In nine cases out of every ten, the moment he sees a man, he runs from him, frantically. A cotton-tail rabbit does not turn tail more quickly or more thoroughly than he. He is wiser than he was, but we don't respect him as much as we did fifty years ago. The mountain goat seems to have rather dull visual power. We think so, because he does not seem to see us as soon as we discover him, or at least does not manifest fear by running from us, but it may be that he does see us, as quickly as a deer or sheep, or bear, but having only a fraction of their suspicion of man, he does not move off until he feels really forced to do so. Small, but he must also avoid getting into a cul-de-sac from which he cannot escape. All these requirements make a goat think. He must look ahead, and plan out his line of retreat, or come to grief. A deer has the quick dash and elan of a cavalry-man, but the goat figures things out carefully, on scientific principles, like a great general of...