Yellowstone, I visited the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, and spent three days camping in the Yosemite Park with John
Muir. It is hard to make comparisons among different kinds of scenery,
all of them very grand and very beautiful; yet personally to me the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, strange and desolate, terrible and awful in
its sublimity, stands alone and unequaled. I very earnestly wish that
Congress would make it a national park, and I am sure that such course
would meet the approbation of the people of Arizona. As to the Yosemite
Valley, if the people of California desire it, as many of them certainly
do, it also should be taken by the National Government to be kept as a
national park, just as the surrounding country, including some of the
groves of giant trees, is now kept.

[Illustration: COOK AND BEAR.]

John Muir and I, with two packers and three pack mules, spent a
delightful three days in the Yosemite. The first night was clear, and we
lay in the open on beds of soft fir boughs among the giant sequoias. It
was like lying in a great and solemn cathedral, far vaster and more
beautiful than any built by hand of man. Just at nightfall I heard,
among other birds, thrushes which I think were Rocky Mountain
hermits--the appropriate choir for such a place of worship. Next day we
went by trail through the woods, seeing some deer--which were not
wild--as well as mountain quail and blue grouse. In the afternoon we
struck snow, and had considerable difficulty in breaking our own
trails. A snow storm came on toward evening, but we kept warm and
comfortable in a grove of the splendid silver firs--rightly named
magnificent, near the brink of the wonderful Yosemite Valley. Next day
we clambered down into it and at nightfall camped in its bottom, facing
the giant cliffs over which the waterfalls thundered.

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is
theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the
Yosemite, its groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the
Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the three Tetons; and the
representatives of the people should see to it that they are preserved
for the people forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.

_Theodore Roosevelt_.

The Zoology of North American Big Game

Among the many questions asked of the naturalist by an inquiring public,
few come up more persistently than "What is the difference betwee