128 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 969 



speaking of this as detached I mean that it 

 must have been written either with little 

 knowledge or scant appreciation of the facts. 



During the summer of 1911 I traveled with 

 three boys about 300 miles through the coun- 

 try south and southeast of the Yellowstone 

 Park, and one night a man who had been 

 turned away from the Reclamation Camp at 

 Jackson Lake was seen prowling around our 

 wagon, which was at some distance from the 

 tent where we were sleeping. A little biggity 

 talk about guns and shooting was enough to 

 scare the poor feUow away, but if he could not 

 have been scared away he would certainly have 

 gotten a dose of lead. 



When we got into the TeUowstone Park we 

 pitched our tent in a good place and proceeded 

 to take in the wonderful sights; but we were 

 warned by a soldier that we must stand guard 

 over our camp after dusk or we would be 

 cleaned out by marauding bear. How would 

 you, curious reader, like to be tied down to 

 guard duty over a side of bacon in Yellow- 

 stone Park? We went there for another pur- 

 pose; but we remembered that we were a long 

 way from a base of supplies ! 



Our first night in the park we slept with an 

 axe under our pillow, thinking to drive Mr. 

 Bear out of our pantry if he should come in 

 the night; which is precisely the most foolish 

 thing we could have done, Mr. Jesse L. Smith 

 to the contrary notwithstanding. If Mr. Bear 

 should happen to be Mrs. Bear with a cub it 

 would be pretty dangerous business. One of 

 the killings (man killings) we heard of dur- 

 ing the summer of 1911 was a three-cornered 

 affair or rather a three-in-a-row affair of this 

 kind, and the man was unfortunately in the 

 middle;. Quoting from the park superinten- 

 dent we would say that this man " was more or 

 less to blame." At any rate we must admit 

 that he was thinking too much of his stock of 

 grub and of his remoteness from a base of 

 supplies. But we would not have been blame- 

 worthy if we had shot the poor hobo from 

 Jackson Lake. No, before God, we wouldn't. 



Mr. Jesse L. Smith's reference to the fright- 

 ening of bear with Roman candles reminds me 



of the crank who proposed to squirt olive oil 

 and phosphorus over the Bastile to set it oa 

 fire at the beginning of the French Revolu- 

 tion. Phosphorus was only a chemical curi- 

 osity in those days, and probably all that had 

 ever been made would have amounted to leas 

 than a pound, and it is extremely amusing to 

 read Carlyle's exhortation to this visionary 

 crank to bring forth his phosphorus and olive 

 oil! The unfortunate but blameworthy man 

 above referred to ought to have had sense 

 enough to have used a Roman candle, or, bet- 

 ter still, a hand grenade filled with liquid 

 anhydrous ammonia! He showed his respect 

 for law, however, in not using a bomb contain- 

 ing liquefied prussic acid; that would have 

 killed the bear. 



We lost all of our grub at the Canyon, and 

 we ate at the hotels during the remainder o£ 

 our trip; a very pleasant change after eight 

 weeks of rough and tumble camping, but ex- 

 travagantly expensive from a teacher's point 

 of view. We knew directly of several small 

 camps besides our own that were raided during 

 our five or six days in the park. Greenhorns, 

 Mr. Smith would say. Yes, they were green- 

 horns in the park under the fatherly care of 

 the superintendent and his company of cav- 

 alry; but it would not have been healthy for 

 man or beast to have gone very far on that as- 

 sumption outside of the park. 



We heard incessant talk about marauding 

 bears; just as we hear incessant talk about the 

 weather in Kansas, without fear, but with 

 deep concern. And we heard circumstantial 

 accounts of at least two campers who were 

 seriously hurt in trying to save their grub. 

 Their midnight sallies were not like " routing 

 a neighbor's cow from a garden patch," to 

 quote Mr. Smith. 



The simple fact is that either ninety-five 

 per cent, of the Yellowstone Park bears must 

 be killed off or soldiers must be placed on all- 

 night guard around the chief camping places 

 in the park. Mr. Smith, and to some extent 

 also the park superintendent, make themselves 

 ridiculous in looking at this matter in tha 

 spirit of complacent statisticians unmindful 



