WAYS OF NATURE 
he will. Where the animals are much hunted, they 
are of course much wilder and more cunning than 
where they are not hunted. In the Yellowstone 
National Park we found the elk, deer, and mountain 
sheep singularly tame; and in the summer, so we 
were told, the bears board at the big hotels. The 
wild geese and ducks, too, were tame; and the red- 
tailed hawk built its nest in a large dead oak that 
stood quite alone near the side of the road. With 
us the same hawk hides its nest in a tree in the dense 
woods, because the farmers unwisely hunt and de- 
stroy it. But the cougars and coyotes and bobcats 
were no tamer in the park than they are in other 
places where they are hunted. 
Indeed, if I had elk and deer and caribou and 
moose and bears and wildcats and beavers and 
otters and porcupines on my farm, I should expect 
them to behave just as they do in other parts of the 
country under like conditions: they would be tame 
and docile if I did not molest them, and wild and 
fierce if I did. They would do nothing out of charac- 
ter in either case. 
Your natural history knowledge of the East will 
avail you in the West. There is no country, says 
Emerson, in which they do not wash the pans and 
spank the babies; and there is no country where a 
dog is not a dog, or a fox a fox, or where a hare is 
ferocious, or a wolf lamblike. The porcupine be- 
haves in the Rockies just as he does in the Catskills; 
102 
