AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 



THE object of this book is to place on record the 

 facts I have gleaned, and the deductions I have 

 drawn, from some twenty-five years of more or less con- 

 stant observation of the grizzly bear. This is an animal 

 much talked about, but little studied. It is now well on 

 its way toward extinction. Our acquaintance with its 

 life history is broken by many gaps and supplemented by 

 many conjectures. Some of these gaps I believe myself 

 able to fill; some of these conjectures I propose to ex- 

 amine and discuss. Before, therefore, venturing even ten- 

 tatively to take the chair as a witness, I find it only right 

 that I should, in so far as I am entitled to do so, qualify 

 as an expert. 



I was born in 1856 on a small farm in southern New 

 Hampshire. This farm, like its neighbors, was little 

 more than piles of rock fenced in by other piles of rock; 

 and from the time I was twelve years old or so I worked 

 on these piles of rock during the summer, and at coopering 

 or lumbering during the winter, and in the saw-mills in the 

 spring. 



I had little schooling, and, indeed, little chance of it; 

 but one of my earliest recollections is nevertheless con- 



3 



