Tell-me-why stories about animals

II

Author of “Tell-Me-Why Stories About Mother Nature,” “The First Book of Photography,” etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

THOMAS WRENN

NEW YORK

McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY

To Him Who Is “Daddy”

To Both Old Pops and Carlie-boy This Book Is Lovingly Inscribed

Preface

Students of Natural History have no business with this book !

If they read it, and find it less complete than the many adequate and learned volumes which were consulted in its writing, they are respectfully informed that the Carlie-boys and Anne-girlies of the world don’t want to know the number of teeth in the upper jaw of the most remote ancestor of the jack rabbit, nor the shape of the backbone of the lineal descendants of the urus. What the Human Question Marks desire to be told is the Why of the What, the Where of the How, and the When of the Who.

Therefore no apologies are here made that these Stories of Animals are not complete life histories. If the fanciful tales interest for a half hour, in spite of their foundation of sober truth, and leave one single dent in some small mind, in which, in later years, some abstruse and dry-as-dust fact of natural history can find a ready resting place, they will have accomplished all -their purpose.

And if they furnish to some question-weary Mamma, some story-tired Old Pops, a way by which they can get a precious half hour of their own, unplastered by their own particular variety of Carlie-boy or Anne-girlie, then they will have risen beyond and above their purpose, and will need no further explanation or introduction from

The Real Old Pops.

Washington, D. C.,