pulse that is awakened on the instant in each member of
the flock. The animals have no systems or methods in the sense
that we have, but like conditions with them always awaken like
impulses, and unity of action is reached without outward
communication.

The lower animals seem to have certain of our foibles, and
antagonisms, and unreasoning petulancies. I was reminded of this
in reading the story President Roosevelt tells of a Colorado bear
he once watched at close quarters. The bear was fussing around a
carcass of a deer, preparatory to burying it. "Once the bear lost
his grip and rolled over during the course of some movement, and
this made him angry and he struck the carcass a savage whack,
just as a pettish child will strike a table against which it has
knocked itself." Who does not recognize that trait in himself:
the disposition to vent one's anger upon inanimate things--upon
his hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off his head and
drops it in the mud or leads him a chase for it across the
street; or upon the stick that tripped him up, or the beam
against which he bumped his head? We do not all carry our anger
so far as did a little three-year-old maiden I heard of, who, on
tripping over the rockers of her chair, promptly picked herself
up, and carrying the chair to a closet, pushed it in and
spitefully shut the door on it, leaving it alone in the dark to
repent its wrong-doing.

Our blind, unreasoning animal anger is excited by whatever
opposes or baffles us. Of course, when we yield to the anger, we
do not act as reasonable beings, but as the unreasoning animals.
It is hard for one to control this feeling when the opposition
comes from some living creature, as a balky horse or a kicking
cow, or a pig that will not be driven through the open gate. When
I was a boy, I once saw one of my uncles kick a hive of bees off
the stand and halfway across the yard, because the bees stung him
when he was about to "take them up." I confess to a fair share of
this petulant, unreasoning animal or human trait, whichever it
may be, myself. It is difficult for me to refrain from jumping
upon my hat when, in my pursuit of it across the street, it has
escaped me two or three times just as I was about to put my hand
upon it, and as for a balky horse or a kicking cow, I never could
trust myself to deal reasonably with them. Follow this feeling
back a few thousand years, and we reach the time when our
forbears looked upon