ression when she beheld me. She
stopped, and then, with a growl of anger, she wheeled and boxed cubs
right and left like an angry mother. The bears disappeared in the
direction from which they had come, the cubs urged on with spanks
from behind as all vanished in the falling snow.

The gray Douglas squirrel is one of the most active, audacious, and
outspoken of animals. He enjoys seclusion and claims to be monarch of
all he surveys, and no trespasser is too big to escape a scolding from
him. Many times he has given me a terrible tongue-lashing with a
desperate accompaniment of fierce facial expressions, bristling
whiskers, and emphatic gestures. I love this brave fellow creature;
but if he were only a few inches bigger, I should never risk my life
in his woods without a gun.

This is a beautiful world, and all who go out under the open sky will
feel the gentle, kindly influence of Nature and hear her good
tidings. The forests of the earth are the flags of Nature. They appeal
to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and
the boundaries of nations are forgotten. It may be that some time an
immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world.

A Watcher on the Heights

While on the sky-line as State Snow Observer, I had one adventure with
the elements that called for the longest special report that I have
ever written. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote this report
transmitted to Professor Carpenter, at Denver, on May 26, 1904.

NOTES ON THE POUDRE FLOOD

The day before the Poudre flood, I traveled for eight hours
northwesterly along the top of the Continental Divide, all the time
being above timber-line and from eleven thousand to twelve thousand
feet above sea-level.

The morning was cloudless and hot. The western sky was marvelously
clear. Eastward, a thin, dark haze overspread everything below ten
thousand feet. By 9.30 A. M. this haze had ascended higher than where
I was. At nine o'clock the snow on which I walked, though it had been
frozen hard during the night, was soggy and wet.

About 9.30 a calm that had prevailed all the morning gave way before
an easy intermittent warm breeze from the southeast.

At 10.10 the first cloud appeared in the north, just above Hague's
Peak. It was a heavy cumulus cloud, but I do not know from what
direction it came. It rose high in the air, drifted slowly toward the
west, and then seemed to dissolve. At any rate, it vanished. A