d.

I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding
in return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and
confessed, but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question
asked, is, "Now truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?" while
they peer curiously down among the hairs through lenses and spectacles.
"Yes, wild sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary's lamb had more. In the name
of use, how many wild sheep, think you, would be required to furnish
wool sufficient for a pair of socks?" I endeavor to point out the
irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild wool was not made
for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient as clothing for other
animals, it is just the thing for the brave mountain-dweller that wears
it. Plain, however, as all this appears, the quantity question rises
again and again in all its commonplace tameness. For in my experience it
seems well-nigh impossible to obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from
any other standpoint than that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more
flannel per sheep than the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture
has improved upon wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is
concerned, but all to the contrary as far as a sheep's dress is
concerned. If every wild sheep inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame
wool, probably only a few would survive the dangers of a single season.
With their fine limbs muffled and buried beneath a tangle of hairless
wool, they would become short-winded, and fall an easy prey to the
strong mountain wolves. In descending precipices they would be thrown
out of balance and killed, by their taggy wool catching upon sharp
points of rocks. Disease would also be brought on by the dirt
which always finds a lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled and
water-soaked condition into which it falls during stormy weather.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable
an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which
culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made
especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal
controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century
to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting
darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for an