1030 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



A FRIENDLY STRUGGLE IN THE ELK RANGE 

 Stanley II at the left and Stanley I at the right. 



STANLEY. 



THE animals of the Zoological Park live 

 their allotted lives and die, as does 

 man in his sphere. 



For the shabbiest of sentimental purposes 

 we mourn the loss of a human acquaintance, 

 but for conventional reasons we are obliged 

 to dismiss from our minds the death of a 

 dumb animal as only a passing circumstance. 



Many of the finer attributes with which 

 man masks his outward self, in violent con- 

 tradiction of the true working of his mind, are 

 part of the every-day life of the higher type 

 of wild animals, and this without simulation. 



It would be sheer idiocy to weigh in the 

 balance of comparison, the mental capacity 

 of the man and animal, and ascribe equally 

 to the animal the delicate impulses of the 

 human mind. And yet they are alike in many 

 ways, the difference being one of degree 

 rather than of kind. The animal is restricted 

 in his sphere and is but a spoke in the great 

 wheel of evolution, but in so far as the needs 

 of his daily life are concerned, he lives a truer 

 and more honest one than a great percentage 

 of the human raee. 



Evolution has been a mighty factor in dis- 

 sipating the theory that some infinite power 

 launched the human race on the road to des- 

 tiny from a handful of clay; but to what 

 power do we ascribe the impulses of the court- 

 ing, the breeding and birth of the young of 

 the wild animal. In this function the female 

 deer is actuated by as divine a sense as the 

 human mother. 



On July 19, 1913, we lost a bull elk— in 

 middle life — from apoplexy, a rare malady 



among animals, but common among full- 

 blooded men. 



Captured in 1901 in the Stanley Basin, 

 Idaho, the young animal arrived in the Park 

 at about the latter half of the first year of 

 his life. 



From the moment that he staggered weakly 

 out of the crate and stared with his steady 

 brown eyes at his keeper, an attachment was 

 formed between them that was both amusing 

 and profound in its varying moods. 



There was enough of the Irish fighting blood 

 in Keeper Quinn to observe and appreciate 

 the good breeding of this true son of the wil- 

 derness who from some association with man- 

 kind in turn accepted him as his natural 

 benefactor. 



From that day Stanley and Quinn waged a 

 continuous struggle, which varied in its in- 

 tensity from cajolery and pampering on 

 Quinn's part, to sheer bulldozing and many 

 sharp attacks on Stanley's. 



He developed rapidly, and during his 

 early years permitted many familiarities from 

 his keeper, but as he began to realize his 

 power and the strength of his antlers, there 

 were constant turmoil and trouble around 

 the Elk House, with many narrow escapes 

 for Quinn. 



When he attained his full development, it 

 was impossible to restrain him except by the 

 strongest devices, and he applied his power- 

 ful antlers to fences and architecture with 

 tireless energy and destructive consequences. 



At times in the early rutting season, he was 

 confined in a small corral at the Elk House, 



