AMONG THE ANIMALS OF THE YOSEMITE 170 



though dusty in some places make no scar on 

 the landscape. They bite and break off the 

 branches of some of the pines and oaks to get 

 the nuts, but this pruning is so light that few 

 mountaineers ever notice it ; and though they 

 interfere with the orderly lichen-veiled decay of 

 fallen trees, tearing them to pieces to reach the 

 colonies of ants that inhabit them, the scattered 

 ruins are quickly pressed back into harmony by 

 snow and rain and over-leaning vegetation. 



The number of bears that make the Park their 

 home may be guessed by the number that have 

 been killed by the two best hunters, Duncan and 

 old David Brown. Duncan began to be known 

 as a bear-killer about the year 1865. He was 

 then roaming the woods, hunting and prospect- 

 ing on the south fork of the Merced. A friend 

 told me that he killed his first bear near his 

 cabin at Wawona ; that after mustering courage 

 to fire he fled, without waiting to learn the ef- 

 fect of his shot. Going back in a few hours he 

 found poor Bruin dead, and gained courage to 

 try again. Duncan confessed to me, when we 

 made an excursion together in 1875, that he was 

 at first mortally afraid of bears, but after killing 

 a half dozen he began to keep count of his vic- 

 tims, and became ambitious to be known as a 

 great bear-hunter. In nine years he had killed 

 forty-nine, keeping count by notches cut on one 

 of the timbers of his cabin on the shore of Ores- 



