Introductory 23 



as abundant as it now is, and this beautiful region 

 would be a permanent health resort and play- 

 ground for the people of a large part of the 

 Union. Such action would be a benefit to every 

 one, but it would be a benefit most of all to the 

 people of the immediate locality. 



In northwestern Wyoming the preservation of 

 the Yellowstone Park by the Federal government 

 has done inestimable good. It preserves the 

 great nursery and breeding-ground of the elk. 

 The reserve should, however, be extended so as 

 to include more of the elk's winter range. 



It is to be remembered that the preservation of 

 the game is by no means merely the affair of the 

 sportsman. Most of us, as we grow older, grow to 

 care relatively less for the sport itself than for the 

 splendid freedom and abounding health of outdoor 

 life in the woods, on the plains, and among the 

 great mountains; and to the true nature lover it 

 is melancholy to see the wilderness stripped of 

 the wild creatures which gave it no small part of 

 its peculiar charm. It is inevitable, and probably 

 necessary, that the wolf and the cougar should 

 go ; but the blacktail and wapiti grouped on the 

 mountain side, the whitetail and moose feeding in 

 the sedgy ponds, — these add beyond measure to 

 the wilderness landscape, and if they are taken 

 away, they leave a lack which nothing else can 

 quite make good. So it is of those true birds of 



