his turn has to look
out for the alligator. But in that competition of the jungle, the
animal has generally to use its wits merely against another animal--not
against man. But the American wolf had to use his wits against man; and
he has beaten man, as I shall describe to you.

_The American Wolf Learns to Evade the Gun_

About a hundred years ago, when people began to go West, they shot many
buffaloes, wolves, antelopes, and deer. They did that for sport or for
profit; they made a profit, because they sold the skins and other parts
of the animals' bodies. At that time the hunters did not want the
animals to be killed off altogether, but they actually killed so many of
these animals in a few years that the buffalo, the deer, and the
antelope became scarce. These particular animals, of course, tried to
use their wits to escape from the hunters. They did not succeed in doing
so. They fell as victims of the gun.

But not so the wolf. He began to use his wits against man and his gun.
He soon realized that man was his enemy and also that man could kill him
from a considerable distance. A wolf saw a man at a distance; then the
wolf heard a bang, and immediately felt a sharp pain in his body. That
wolf fell and died. But another wolf saw his brother die like that. He
set his wits to work. He concluded that the man had caused the bang
which made his brother fall and die. Hence the wolf realized that man
was dangerous to him, even at a distance. So after that the wolf
resolved to run away from man. And other wolves learned to do the same.

Of course, the whole race of wolves did not learn this lesson so
quickly. Many hundreds of wolves meanwhile fell victims to man's gun;
but a few wolves escaped. These few wolves also saw repeatedly that if
any of their brothers allowed a man to approach anywhere near him, he
was killed. So after seeing that happen many times, the surviving wolves
learned that they must always run away from the presence of man.

These few surviving wolves taught their children to do the same. Some of
these wolf children did not heed that lesson when they grew up; so they
too were killed. But a few of the wolf children remembered the lesson
when they grew up; so they escaped getting killed.

In turn these wolves also taught _their_ children to run away from the
presence of man. So in a few generations a race of wolves grew up in the
West that the hunter _did not even get the chance to shoot_.

That in