ROOSEVELT -Ml' LIFE AS A NATURALIST 



3 '.^9 



iiu'iit for the work of the iiold natural- 

 ist, the faunal naturalist, but this work 

 was positively discouraged, and was 

 treated as of negligible value. 'I'he 

 ell'ect of this attitude, coniiuon at tliat 

 time to all our colleges, was detrimen- 

 tal to one very important side of natu- 

 ral liistory rt'seareh. Tlie adinii-able 

 work of the mieroscopist had no at I fac- 

 tion for me. nor was T fitted Tor it : 1 

 grew even moi'c int('reste(l in other 

 forms of W(U-k than in thi' work of a 

 faunal naturalist : and 1 al)andoned all 

 thought of making the study of my 

 science my life interest. 



But I never lost a real interest in 

 natural history; and I very keenly re- 

 gret that at certain times I did not 

 display this interest in more j)ractical 

 fashion. Thus, for the dozen 3^ears be- 

 ginning with 1883, I spent much of my 

 time on the Little Missouri, where big 

 game M-as then plentiful. Most big 

 game hunters never learn anything 

 about the game except how to kill it ; 

 and most naturalists never observe it 

 at all. Therefore a large amount of 

 important and rather obvious facts re- 

 mains unobserved or inaccurately ob- 

 served until the species becomes extinct. 

 What is most needed is not the ability 

 to see what very few people can see, but 

 to see what almost anybody can see, but 

 nobody takes the trouble to look at. But 

 I vaguely supposed that the obvious 

 facts were known ; and I let most of the 

 opportunities pass by. Even so, many 

 of my observations on the life histories 

 of the bighorns, white goats, prong- 

 l)ucks, deer, and wapiti, and occasional 

 observations on some of the other 

 beasts, such as black-footed ferrets, 

 were of value ; indeed as regards some 

 of the big game beasts, the accounts in 

 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Ranch 

 Life and the Hunting Trail, and The 

 Wilderness Hunter gave a good deal of 

 information which, as far as I know, 

 is not to be found elsewhere. 



To illustrate what I mean as "ob- 

 vious"' facts which nevertheless are of 



real value I shall instance the cougar, 

 in tile winter of 1910 1 nuule a cougar 

 hunt with hounds, spending about live 

 w cH'ks in the nu)untains of northwest- 

 ern Colorado. At that time the cougar 

 had been seemingly well known to 

 liunters. settlers, naturalists, and nov- 

 elists for more than a eentui'y : and yet 

 it was actually impossible to get trust- 

 worthy testimony on such elementary 

 points as, for instance, whether the 

 male and feuude mated permanently, 

 or at least until the young were reared 

 (like foxes and wolves), and whether 

 the aninuil caught its pivy by randjiing 

 and stalking or. as was frequently as- 

 serted, by lying in wait on the 

 branches of a tree. The facts I saw 

 and observed during our five weeks' 

 hunt in the snow were obvious ; they 

 needed only the simplest powers of 

 observation and of deduction from 

 observation. But nobody had hitherto 

 shown or exercised these simple pow- 

 ers ! My narrative in the volume Out- 

 door Pastimes of an American Hunter 

 gave the first reasonably full and trust- 

 worthy life history of the cougar as re- 

 gards its most essential details — for 

 Merriam's capital Adirondack study 

 had dealt with the species when it was 

 too near the vanishing point and there- 

 fore when the conditions were too 

 abnormal for some of these essential 

 details to be observed. 



In South America I made observa- 

 tions of a certain value on some of the 

 strange creatures we met, and these are 

 to be found in the volume Through the 

 Brazilian Wildei'ness; but the trip was 

 primarily one of exploration. In Af- 

 rica, however, we really did some good 

 work in natural history. ]\Iany of my 

 observations were set forth in my book 

 African Game Trails: and I have al- 

 ways felt that the book which Edmund 

 Heller and I jointly wrote, the Life 

 Histories of African Game Animals. 

 was a serious and worth-while contribu- 

 tion to science. Here again, this con- 

 tribution, so far as T was concerned, 



