late to look upon wild animals as fellow heritors of the earth,
possessing certain natural rights which men are glad rather than bound
to respect. It is not too late to consider them, with birds and forests,
lakes, rivers, seas, and skies, a part of nature's glorious gift for
man's manifold satisfaction, a gift to carefully conserve for the study
and enjoyment of to-day, and to develop for the uses of larger and more
appreciative generations to come.

Of course if this be brought to universal accomplishment (and the
impulse has been advancing fast of late), it must be Yellowstone's part
to furnish the exhibit, for we have no other.

To many the most surprising part of Yellowstone's wild-animal message is
man's immunity from hatred and harm by predatory beasts. To know that
wild bears if kindly treated are not only harmless but friendly, that
grizzlies will not attack except in self-defense, and that wolves, wild
cats, and mountain-lions fly with that instinctive dread which is man's
dependable protection, may destroy certain romantic illusions of youth
and discredit the observation if not the conscious verity of many an
honest hunter; but it imparts a modern scientific fact which sets the
whole wild-animal question in a new light. In every case of assault by
bears where complete evidence has been obtainable, the United States
Biological Survey, after fullest investigation, has exonerated the bear;
he has always been attacked or has had reason to believe himself
attacked. In more than thirty summers of field-work Vernon Bailey, Chief
Field-Naturalist of the Biological Survey, has slept on the ground
without fires or other protection, and frequently in the morning found
tracks of investigating predatory beasts. There are reports but no
records of human beings killed by wolves or mountain-lions in America.
Yet, for years, all reports susceptible of proof have been officially
investigated.

One of Yellowstone's several manifest destinies is to become the
well-patronized American school of wild-life study. Already, from its
abundance, it is supplying wild animals to help in the long and
difficult task of restoring here and there, to national parks and other
favorable localities, stocks which existed before the great slaughter.

V

Thirty miles south of this rolling volcanic interlude the pristine
Rockies, as if in shame of their moment of gorgeous softness, rear in
contrast their sharpest and most heroic monument of b