June ii, 1902. jl 
FOREST AN£> STREAM. 
488 
possessed of philosophic intellects, of dogs with wonder- 
ful spiritual endowment, and even of wolves with strict 
codes of morals. The frank fables of old times were 
excusable and even profitable, but the mawkish sentiment 
of a new school of romanticists whom honest naturalists 
cannot but suspect to be laughing in their sleeves at popu- 
lar credence, will not and cannot make for good. It may 
perhaps awaken some feeling where none existed, and 
carry some minds a few steps in the right direction. But 
in the main there will be the normal reaction and the 
fever of false sympathy will be followed by the coldest 
and most cruel indifference. The real kindness to ani- 
mals is the kindness that springs from scientific truth 
and knowledge. It is not the vapid compassion of people 
who, while their religious sentiment is shocked by the doc- 
trine of descent, are yet thrilled with the moral beauty of 
idealized brutes, nor yet of those who, untouched by the 
real suffering of underpaid, toil-worn, soul-darkened 
human brothers, are yet full of mawkish sympathy with 
the romantic trials of a coyote. But why do they stop 
here? Cannot some one write them a tale of outrage to 
the morale, or of offense to the aesthetics of wharf rats or 
cockroaches? So ridiculous and illogical is much of this 
sentimentality that one wonders why some of it cannot 
be extended to flesh flies, which actually multiply one 
hundred million-fold per month, and which must needs 
perish violently by billions ; or even to the poor and, now- 
adays, much-abused bacteria, compared to which even 
the unthinkable rate of increase among flies is as one to 
millions. 
We are told by one who is perhaps not only the lead- 
ing exponent of natural selection to-day, but also the 
greatest of living naturalists, that "to us, the whole pur- 
pose, the only raison d'etre of the world — with all its 
complexities of physical structure, with its grand geo- 
logical progress, the slow evolution of the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms, and the ultimate appearance of man — 
was the development of the human spirit in association 
with the human body. From the fact that the spirit of 
man — the man himself — is so developed, we may well be- 
lieve that this is the only, or at least the best, way for 
its development ; and we may even see in what is usually 
termed 'evil' on the earth one of the most efficient means 
of growth. For we know that the noblest faculties of man 
are strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort; 
it is by unceasing warfare against physical evils and in the 
midst of difficulty and danger that energy, courage, self- 
reliance and industry have become the common qualities 
of the northern races ; it is by the battle with moral evil 
in all its hydra-headed forms, that the still nobler qual- 
ities of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacrifice 
have been steadily increasing in the world." 
Notwithstanding, then, the multitude of people who 
think they could have made a better universe than the 
Almighty has ordained, nature keeps on her way, always 
evolving* the better from the worse. Dire as her cataclys- 
mic forces may seem, it is along her lines that progress is 
made. The low and the weak perish that the strong and 
the true may live. Science is nature's interpreter ; by her 
■ guidance must we walk. In what untold misery old 
theologies, pseudo-cosmogonies steeped the world in the 
ages before the light of science shone on the infamy of 
their cruel superstitions ! That science has no war with 
eternal religion, but is her priestess, is at last realized. 
For science is truth, ceaseless, universal, unalterable. It 
[ recognizes no sectarian metes and bounds. 
Buddhist and Mohammedan keep their footing on this 
earth by gravity no less than we ; water seeks its level in 
lands where Christian dogma has never been heard. And 
' the laws of science govern other spheres than ours. The 
more we know of them the wiser shall we be, and the 
better and the kinder. The study of the physical sciences 
has delivered us from the bondage of old superstitious 
beliefs; the study of biology is adding daily to health 
and comfort; the study of psychology to justice and 
ethical truth. .Even some of the outposts of American 
politics seem at last about to yield to the assaults of social 
science. The leaders of science are the leaders of civiliza- 
tion. In their train the true sportsman walks. Students 
and interpreters and true lovers of nature have none of 
the mistaken sentimentality of which we have spoken; 
John Burroughs pointed out nature's violent methods 
before Darwin formulated his hypothesis; the great Audu- 
bon carried a gun. The true sportsman shoots only savage 
or pestiferous beasts and edible game ; he kills quickly and 
without torture animals which sooner or later would die 
a slo\ver and a more painful death through the agency of 
fierce carnivores or by starvation, disease, floods or frosts; 
he protects legitimate game, and all forms of wild life 
which are of use or service to mankind. In his ranks are 
r umbered discoverers, explorers, naturalists and artists. 
: What a world of facts from which to generalize have 
1 scientific specialists owed to his observation ! The sports- 
man is nature's lover— delighting in her changing moods, 
, her waving fields, her twilit woods, her morning blushes, 
the prodigous glory of her sunsets, her wind-driven tears, 
her laughing streams, her burning suns, her whirling 
snows, her perils and her dangers, the colorific radiance 
of her autumnal woodlands, the beauty and the grace, the 
strength and the cunning of her wild life that tries and 
so often baffles his skill. And he is Hygeia's knight as 
well— cultivating quickness and keenness of eye, strength 
of muscle, steadiness of nerve, daring, energy, self-reli- 
ance, endurance, courage and all that gives virility and 
manliness to chara cter. Lynn T ew Sprague. 
The Yellowstone Park. 
Yellowstone Park, Wyo., June 10. — The Park hotels 
opened on May 30. Travel has been unusually good to 
date, and is generally increasing as the season advances. 
The Northern Pacific Railway Company is extending its 
system from Cinnabar, Mont., to the Park line at Gardi- 
ner. It is expected that trains will be running into Gardi- 
ner in a few days. 
The work of improvement of roads is temporarily sus- 
pended, as the last year's appropriation is exhausted and 
the new one is not yet available. An appropriation of 
$250,000 is expected for this work this season. 
Troops A and C of the Thirteenth Cavalry recently ar- 
" rived in the Park for duty during the tourist season. 
One of these troops has been stationed in the Lower Gey- 
ser Basin, and the oth<jr one is in camp near Fort Yel- 
lowstone, 
All of the game wintered well. The deer and elk in 
the vicinity of Fort Yellowstone are much more numer- 
ous and seem much tamer than ever before. It is a com- 
mon sight to see a bunch of deer on the parade ground 
within a few yards of the quarters, and they have ap- 
parently lost all fear for man, The regulation in regard 
to loose dogs in the Park is rigidly enforced, which 
doubtless accounts for the growing tameness of these 
animals. 
Some of the Park saouts are at present engaged in 
catching up 3'oung antelope and elk, which will be placed 
in the game corral at Mammoth Hot Springs during the 
summer. 
The Park has been unusually free from the ravages of 
poachers during the past winter. The people living near 
the borders are quite friendly to the present administra- 
tion, and co-operate as far as possible with Park author- 
ities in keeping track of a few lawless characters that are 
still to be found near the Park. The good citizens of the 
Jackson Hole country south of the Park have organized 
a Game Protective Association, and are preparing to make 
it warm for poachers in that vicinity. 
A similar association has been formed by the citizens of 
Gardiner and Jardine, near the northern boundary of the 
Park. The large bands of elk that drift out of the Park 
in the vicinity of Jardine have become very tame, and 
come almost into the streets of the town, and the people 
have come to the conclusion that they will see that they 
are not killed except as allowed by Montana State law, 
and are going to see that these laws are enforced in the 
future. 
A representative of the United States Fish Commission, 
from Spearfish, S. D., arrived in the Park" last week with 
50,000 Eastern brook trout, which were planted in some of 
the small streams between Mammoth Hot Springs and 
Norris Geyser Basin.. The attendants who came with the 
fish have established a camp on one of the small streams 
that empties into Yellowstone Lake, where they will re- 
main for a month gathering eggs of the black-spotted 
trout for supplying the Linked States hatchery at Spear- 
fish, * 
Wild Animals of the North. 
From Richardson's "Fauna Boreali-Amcricana; or the Zoology of 
the Northern Parts of British America." 
(Continued fro?n page 465.) 
The Badger. 
Under the name Meles labradoria, Richardson speaks of 
the ordinary badger of the West, which he tells us he found 
as far north as Peace River, and the River of the Moun- 
tains, in latitude 58 degrees, south of which it is, of 
course, abundant, and well known to all prairie travelers. 
It was called by the French-Canadians blaireaux, or 
brairo. He speaks of the annoyance caused to horsemen 
by the burrows of the badger, which are especially trouble- 
some when the ground is covered by snow. At this time, 
he says, "the badger rarely or never comes from its hole, 
and I suppose that in that climate it passes the winter 
from the beginning of November to April in a torpid 
state. Indeed, as it obtains the small animals on which 
it feeds by surprising them in their burrows, it has little 
chance of digging them out at a time when the ground 
is frozen into a solid rock. Like the bears, the badgers 
do not lose much flesh during their long hibernation, for, 
on coming abroad in the springy they are observed to be 
very fat. As they pair, however, at that season, they 
soon become lean. 
"This badger is a slow and timid animal, taking to the 
first earth it comes to when pursued; and as it makes its 
way through the sandy soil with the rapidity of a mole, it 
soon places itself out of the reach of danger. The 
strength of its forefeet and claws is so great that one 
which had insinuated only its head and shoulders into a 
hole, resisted the utmost efforts of two stout young men 
who endeavored to drag it out by the hind legs and tail, 
until 'one of them fired the contents of his fowling piece 
into its body. Early in the spring, however, when they 
first begin to stir abroad, they may be easily caught by 
pouring water into their holes, for the ground being 
frozen at that period, the water does not escape through 
the sand, but soon fills the hole, and its tenant is obliged 
to come out." 
What Richardson says of the slowness and timidity of 
the badger is true, yet it is a well-known fact that it is 
ever ready to defend itself, and that if cut off from its 
hole it will charge a man with the utmost apparent 
ferocity. Old prairie men say that a sharp blow on 
the nose will kill a badger, but this is not entirely true, 
as we have more than once remarked. On a number of 
occasions we supposed that we had killed one of these 
animals by striking it on the nose, for it fell over, and, 
after kicking and quivering, apparently died. Once, 
however, I happened to remain for a time near the 
animal so treated, and after five or ten minutes was 
astonished to see the creature recover from its apparent 
death, regain its feet and waddle off. It appeared from 
this that a blow on the nose merely stunned, without do- 
ing it any serious injury. 
The Wolverine. 
There is perhaps no North American mammal that 
has so many names as the wolverine, glutton or carcajou, 
and certainly none that is so universally execrated by the 
hunters and trappers of the North. Its ingenuity in an- 
noying the trapper, its wisdom, which enables it "to avoid 
all his devices, its malice, which leads it to do a hundred 
things which defeat and discomfit him who is following a 
line of traps, make it one of the best-known, as it is the 
most bitterly hated, of all the fur-bearers of the North. 
Much has been written on this subject by traders and 
trappers of the far North, but perhaps nothing so much 
to the purpose as the following account, which we take 
from Dr. Coues' admirable "Fur-Bearing Animals" : 
"The winter I passed at Fort Simpson," writes Mr. 
Lockhart, "I had a line of marten and fox traps, and lynx 
snares, extending as far as Lac de Brochet. Visiting 
them on one occasion I found a lynx alive in one of my 
snares, and being indisposed to carry it so far home, de- 
termined to kill and skin it before it should freeze. But 
how to cache the skin till my return ? This was a serious 
question, for carcajou tracks were numerous. Placing the 
carcass as a decoy in a clump of willows at one side of 
the path, I went some distance on the opposite side, dug 
a hole with my snowshoe about three feet deep in the 
snow, packed the skin in the smallest possible compass, 
and put it in the bottom of the hole, which I filled up 
again very carefully, packing the snow down hard, and 
then strewing loose snow over the surface till the spot 
looked as if it had never been disturbed. I also strewed 
blood and entrails in the path and around the willows. 
Returning next morning, I found that the carcass was 
gone, as I expected it would be. but that the place where 
the skin was cached was apparently undisturbed. 'Ah, 
you rascal !' said I, addressing aloud the absent carcajou. 
T have outwitted you for once.' I lighted my pipe and 
proceeded leisurely to dig up the skin to place in my 
muskimoot. I went clear down to the ground, on this 
side and on that, but no lynx skin was there. The carca- 
jou had been before me, and had carried it off along with 
the carcass, but he had taken the pains to fill up the hole 
again and make everything as smooth as before ! 
"At Peel's River, on one occasion, a very old carcajou 
discovered my marten road, on which I had nearly a 
hundred and fifty traps. I was in the habit of visiting 
the line about once a fortnight, but the beast fell into the 
way of coming oftener than I did, to my great annoyance 
and vexation. I determined to put a stop to his thieving 
and his life together, cost what it might. So I made six 
strong traps at as many different points, and also set three 
steel traps. For three weeks I tried my best to catch 
the beast, without success, and my worst enemy would 
allow that I am no green hand in these matters. The 
animal carefully avoided the traps set for his own bene- 
fit, and seemed to be taking more delight than ever in 
demolishing my marten traps and eating the martens, scat- 
tering the poles in every direction, and caching what 
baits or martens he did not devour on the spot. As we 
had no poison in those days, I next set a gun on the bank 
of a little lake. The gun was concealed in some low 
bushes, but the bait was so placed that the carcajou must 
see it on his way up the bank. I blockaded my path to 
the gun with a small pine tree, which completely hid it. 
On my first visit afterward I found that the beast had 
gone up to the bait and smelled it, but had left it un- 
touched. He had next pulled up the pine tree that blocked 
the path, and gone around the gun and cut the line which 
connected the bait with the trigger, just behind the muz- 
zle. Then he had gone back and pulled the bait away 
and carried it on to the lake, where he laid down and de- 
voured it at his leisure. There I found mv string. I 
could scarcely believe that all this had been done de- 
signedly, for it seemed that faculties fully on a par with 
human reason would be required for such an exploit, if 
done intentionally.. I therefore rearranged things, tying 
the string where it had been bitten. But the result 'was 
exactly the same for three successive occasions, as I could 
plainly see by the footprints; and what is most singular 
of all, each time the brute was careful to cut the line a 
little back of where it had been tied before, as if actually 
reasoning with himself that even the knots might be some 
new device of mine, and therefore a source of hidden 
danger he would prudently avoid. I came to the conclu- 
sion that that carcajou ought to live, as he must be some- 
thing at least human, if not worse. I gave it up, and 
abandoned the road for a period. 
"On another occasion a carcajou amused himself, much 
as usual, by tracking my line from one end to the other 
and demolishing my traps, as fast as I could set them. I 
put a large steel trap in the middle of a path, that 
branched off among some willows, spreading no bait, but 
risking the chance that the animal would 'put his foot in 
it' on his way to break a trap at the end of the path. On 
my next visit I found that the trap was gone, but I 
noticed the blood and entrails of a hare that had evidently 
been caught in the trap and devoured by the carcajou on 
the spot. Examining his footprints, I was satisfied that 
he had not been caught, and I took up his trail. Proceed- 
ing about a mile through the woods I came to a -mall 
lake, on the banks of which I recognized traces, of the 
trap, which the beast had lain down in order to go a few 
steps to one side to make water on a stump. He then 
returned and picked up the trap, which he had carried 
across the lake, with many a twist and turn on the hard 
crust of snow to mislead his expected pursuer, and then • 
again entered the woods. I followed for about half a 
mile further and then came to a large hole dug in the 
snow. This place, however, seemed not to have suited 
him, for there was nothing there. A few yards farther 
on, however, I found a neatly built mound of snow on 
which the animal had made water and left his dirt; this I 
knew was his cache. Using one of my snowshocs for a 
spade, I dug into the hillock and down to the ground, the 
snow being about four feet deep, and there 1 found my 
trap, with the toes of a rabbit still in the jaws. Could 
it have been "the animal's instinctive impulse to" hide prey 
that made him carry my trap so far merely f r the morsel 
of meat still held in it? Or did his cunning nature prompt 
him to hide the trap for fear that on some future unlucky 
occasion he might put his own toes in it and share the 
rabbit's fate?" 
"This propensity of the wolverine to carry off traps 
receives confirmation from other sources. In Captain 
Cartwright's Journal (II., 407), a similar instance is 
recorded in the following terms: 'In coming to the foot 
of Table .Hill I crossed the track of a wolverine with 
one of Mn Callingham's traps on his fo; t; the foxes had 
followed his bleeding track. As this bea;t went through 
the thick of the woods, under the north s .'do of the hill, 
where the snow was so deep and light that it was with the 
greatest difficulty I could follow him even on Indian 
rackets, I was quite puzzled to know lrw he had con- 
trived to prevent the trap from catcl'.'ng; hold of the 
branches of trees or sinking in the snow. Bui on conrng up 
with him I discovered how he had managed f if n ffcj mak- 
ing an attempt to fly at me, he took the trap 11 Ms month 
and ran upon three legs. These creature arc surprisingly 
strong in proportion to their size; this i u '-li- d only 
twenty-six pounds and the trap eight; yej iivc-rtlifg ,t\\ Hie 
turns he had taken he had carried it six utii 
Many extraordinary legends have grown up c.mccrn ng 
