Books: Part of the Life

THE VOICE OF THE COYOTE (386 pp.)—J. Frank Dobie—Little, Brown ($4).

Some people of the Southwest believe that the coyote never dies, some that the yowling beasts can talk, in Indian languages and Mexican-Spanish. Nobody is better qualified to round up all such legends, and more factual reports on the canny coyote, than Texas' shock-haired Professor Dobie, who knows as much about the Southwest as any man (Coro-nado's Children, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver), and who has, moreover, lectured about it at Britain's Cambridge University (TIME, May 7, 1945).

Coyotes, says Author Dobie, know how to play dead, disguise themselves, hunt in...