The exercise he had taken, and the sharpness of the wind, proved excellent stimulants; and Paul himself had hardly been in better plight to do credit to the trapper's cookery, than was the lover of nature, when the grateful invitation met his ears.

Indulging in a small laugh, which his exertions to repress reduced nearly to a simper, he took the indicated seat by the old man's side, and made the customary dispositions to commence his meal without further ceremony.
"I should be ashamed of my profession," he said, swallowing a morsel of the hump with evident delight, slily endeavouring at the same time to distinguish the peculiarities of the singed and defaced skin, "I ought to be ashamed of my profession, were there beast, or bird, on the continent of America, that I could not tell by some one of the many evidences which science has enlisted in her cause.

This--then--the food is nutritious and savoury--a mouthful of your corn, friend, if you please ?" Paul, who continued eating with increasing industry, looking askaunt not unlike a dog when engaged in the same agreeable pursuit, threw him his pouch, without deeming it at all necessary to suspend his own labours.
"You were saying, friend, that you have many ways of telling the creatur' ?"--observed the attentive trapper.
"Many; many and infallible.

Now, the animals that are carnivorous are known by their incisores." "Their what ?" demanded the trapper.
"The teeth with which nature has furnished them for defence, and in order to tear their food.

Again--" "Look you then for the teeth of this creatur'," interrupted the trapper, who was bent on convincing a man who had presumed to enter into competition with himself, in matters pertaining to the wilds, of gross ignorance; "turn the piece round and find your inside-overs." The Doctor complied, and of course without success; though he profited by the occasion to take another fruitless glance at the wrinkled hide.
"Well, friend, do you find the things you need, before you can pronounce the creatur' a duck or a salmon ?" "I apprehend the entire animal is not here ?" "You may well say as much," cried Paul, who was now compelled to pause from pure repletion; "I will answer for some pounds of the fellow, weighed by the truest steel-yards west of the Alleghanies.