200 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
Roosevelt, in summing up its characteristics, 
concluded that it would be no more dangerous 
to sleep in woods populated with mountain 
lions than if they were so many ordinary cats. 
In addition to years of camping in the wilds 
in all sorts of places and under all conditions of 
weather I have talked with careful frontiers- 
men, skillful hunters and trappers, and these 
people uniformly agreed with what I have found 
to be true—that the instances of mountain lions 
attacking human beings are exceedingly rare. 
In each of these cases the peculiar action of the 
lion and the comparative ineffectiveness of his 
attacks indicated that he was below normal 
mentally or nearly exhausted physically. 
Two other points of agreement are: Rarely 
does any one under ordinary conditions see a 
lion; and just as rarely does one hear its call. 
Of the dozen or more times I have heard the 
screech of the lion, on three occasions there was 
a definite cause for the cry—on one a mother 
frantically sought her young, which had been 
carried off by a trapper; and twice the cry was 
a wail, in each instance given by the lion calling 
for its mate, recently slain by a hunter. 
During the past thirty years I have investi- 
gated dozens of stories told of lions leaping 
upon travellers from cliffs or tree limbs, or of 
other stealthy attacks. When run down each 
