IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES 385 



acres of these very dog-tooth violets and spring beauties 

 for the sake of the bulbs on their roots; and that they 

 rarely or never touched the shooting stars. All this illus- 

 trates the extreme care which should be taken in making 

 observations and in dogmatizing from insufficient data; 

 and also the absolute necessity, if a full and accurate 

 natural history is to be written, of drawing upon the 

 experience of very many different observers provided, 

 of course, that they are trustworthy observers. 



For every one of our large beasts there should be at 

 least one such work as Lewis Morgan's book on the 

 beaver. The observations of many different men, all 

 accurate observers of wide experience, will be needed to 

 make any such book complete. Most hunters can now 

 and then supply some interesting experiences. Thus Gif- 

 ford Pinchot and Harry Stimson, while in the Montana 

 Rockies last fall saw a she white goat beat off a war eagle 

 which had attacked her yearling young. The eagle 

 swooped on the yearling in most determined fashion ; but 

 the old she, rising on her hind legs, caught the great bird 

 fairly on her horns; and the eagle was too roughly han- 

 dled to repeat the onslaught. At nearly the same time, 

 in British Columbia, Senator Penrose and his brother 

 were hunting bears. The brother killed a yearling 

 grizzly. While standing over the body, the old she 

 appeared and charged him. She took two bullets with- 

 out flinching, knocked him down, bit him severely, and 

 would undoubtedly have killed him had she not in the 

 nick of time succumbed to her own mortal wounds. 



Recently there has appeared a capital series of obser- 



