138 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



their appalling dependence upon small things for food, it is to 

 me marvelous that they now maintain themselves with such 

 astounding success. 



A grizzly will dig a big and rocky hole three or four feet 

 deep to get one tiny ground-squirrel, a tidbit so small that an 

 adult grizzly could surely eat one hundred of them, like so 

 many plums, at one sitting. A bear will feed on berries under 

 such handicaps that one would not be surprised to see a bear 

 starve to death in a berry-patch. 



But almost invariably the wild bear when killed is fairly 

 well fed and prosperous; and I fancy that no one ever found 

 a bear that had died of cold and exposure. The cunning of 

 the black bear in self-preservation surpasses that of all other 

 large mammal species of North America save the wolf, the 

 white-tailed deer and the coyote. In the game of self-pre- 

 servation I will back that quartet against all the other large 

 land animals of North America. 



What Constitutes Comfortable Captivity. It is im- 

 possible for any man of good intelligence to work continuously 

 with a wild animal without learning something of its thoughts 

 and its temper. 



In our Zoological Park, day by day and hour by hour our 

 people carry into practical effect their knowledge of the psy- 

 chology of our mammals, birds and reptiles. In view of the 

 work that we have done during the past twenty-one years of 

 the Park's history, we do not need to apologize for claiming to 

 know certain definite things about wild animal minds. It is 

 my belief that nowhere in the world is there in one place so 

 large an aggregation of dangerous beasts, birds and reptiles as 

 ours. And yet accidents to our keepers from them have been 

 exceedingly few, and all have been slight save four. 



Twenty-five years ago I endeavored to plan for the Zoo- 

 logical Society the most humane and satisfactory bear dens on 

 earth. Fortunately we knew something about bears, both 

 wild and captive. Never before have we written out the exact 



