ched a moose, once an
eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten
these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought
them too near for perfect comfort.

So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness
of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a
personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the
only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and
find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at
fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have
seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to
write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the
nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to
endure.

Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my
record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest
and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as
soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of
the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and
measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following
facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the
forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point
of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the
chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case,
exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the
photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing
thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of
a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest
walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in
an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the
spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say
nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the
deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the
surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four
and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could
easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart
from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six
to eig