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 



