148 The Grizzly Bear 



Now he got down to business, and in less time than it 

 takes to write it he was out of sight and beyond hearing. 

 When I developed the plate it looked as though a cannon- 

 ball of hair had been shot across it. 



This was my first evening, and it did not pan out very 

 heavily in practical results. But I had had a lot of sport, 

 and had begun to find out, as later on I was to prove more 

 thoroughly, that the Yellowstone Park grizzlies differ in no 

 material respect from others of their species. 



The next afternoon at about two o'clock I was again 

 in my place of observation, with everything again in 

 readiness for business. This time, thinking that it might 

 not be so easy to detect, I had substituted a tiny wire for 

 the thread. The wire was the finest that I could buy, the 

 kind that florists use for winding flowers, and unless I 

 knew exactly where it was, I could not see it myself when 

 ten feet away from it. I had now selected a spot where the 

 trail wound around between some fallen trees, where there 

 was little danger of the bears getting scent of the wire be- 

 fore they came immediately upon it. 



About six o'clock there came up a heavy thunder-storm 

 and for more than an hour it rained in torrents. When I 

 saw the storm approaching, I walked over a little way 

 from the trail, peeled the bark from a couple of small trees, 

 and covered my camera and my can of batteries, to keep 

 them from getting wet. The flash-pan was fitted with a 

 loose cover, easily thrown off by the exploding powder, and 

 having thus protected my apparatus, I put on my rain coat, 

 crawled under a thick-limbed, umbrellahke tree, and 

 waited for the storm to pass. In the middle of it I saw a 

 small black bear coming through the timber and headed 



