AMONG THE ANIMALS OF THE YOSEMITE 173 



joying as great variety as if he traveled to far-off 

 countries north and south. To him almost every 

 thing is food except granite. Every tree helps 

 to feed him, every bush and herb, with fruits and 

 flowers, leaves and bark ; and all the animals he 

 can catch, — badgers, gophers, ground squirrels, 

 lizards, snakes, etc., and ants, bees, wasps, old 

 and young, together with their eggs and larvae 

 and nests. Craunched and hashed, down all go 

 to his marvelous stomach, and vanish as if cast 

 into a fire. What digestion ! A sheep or a 

 wounded deer or a pig he eats warm, about as 

 quickly as a boy eats a buttered muffin ; or should 

 the meat be a month old, it still is welcomed with 

 tremendous relish. After so gross a meal as 

 this, perhaps the next will be strawberries and 

 clover, or raspberries with mushrooms and nuts, 

 or puckery acorns and chokecherries. And as 

 if fearing that anything eatable in all his domin- 

 ions should escape being eaten, he breaks into 

 cabins to look after sugar, dried apples, bacon, etc. 

 Occasionally he eats the mountaineer's bed ; but 

 when he has had a full meal of more tempting 

 dainties he usually leaves it undisturbed, though 

 he has been known to drag it up through a hole 

 in the roof, carry it to the foot of a tree, and lie 

 down on it to enjoy a siesta. Eating everything, 

 never is he himself eaten except by man, and 

 only man is an enemy to be feared. " B'ar meat," 

 said a hunter from whom I was seeking informa- 



