The arrogance of the bears that couldn’t be shot once led to a droll and also exciting episode.

During the period when Mr. C.J.  Jones ("Buffalo” Jones) was superintendent of the wild animals of the Park, the indignities inflicted upon tourist campers by certain grizzly bears quite abraded his nerves.  He obtained from Major Pitcher authority to punish and reform a certain grizzly, and went about the matter in a thoroughly Buffalo-Jonesian manner.  He procured a strong lariat and a bean-pole seven feet long and repaired to the camp that was troubled by too much grizzly.

The particular offender was a full-grown male grizzly who had become a notorious raider.  At the psychological moment Jones lassoed him in short order, getting a firm hold on the bear’s left hind leg.  Quickly the end of the rope was thrown over a limb of the nearest tree, and in a trice Ephraim found himself swinging head downward between the heavens and the earth.  And then his punishment began.

Buffalo Jones thrashed him soundly with the bean-pole!  The outraged bear swung to and fro, whirled round and round, clawing and snapping at the empty air, roaring and bawling with rage, scourged in flesh and insulted in spirit.  As he swung, the bean-pole searched out the different parts of his anatomy with a wonderful degree of neatness and precision.  Between rage and indignation the grizzly nearly exploded.  A moving-picture camera was there, and since that day that truly moving scene has amazed and thrilled countless thousands of people.

When it was over, Mr. Jones boldly turned the bear loose!  Although its rage was as boundless as the glories of the Yellowstone Park, it paused not to rend any of those present, but headed for the tall timber, and with many an indignant “Woof!  Woof!” it plunged in and disappeared.  It was two or three years before that locality was again troubled by impudent grizzly bears.

And what is the mental attitude of every Rocky Mountain black or grizzly bear outside of the Yellowstone Park?  It is colossal suspicion of man, perpetual fear, and a clean pair of heels the moment man-scent or man-sight proclaims the proximity of the Arch Enemy of Wild Creatures.  And yet there are one or two men who tell the American public that wild animals do not think, that they do not reason, and are governed only by “instinct”!

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!”

TAMING WILD BIRDS.—­As incontestable proof of the receptive faculties of birds, I will cite the taming of wild birds in the open, by friendly advances.  There are hundreds, aye, thousands, of men, women, boys and girls who could give interesting and valuable personal testimony on this point.

My friend J. Alden Loring (one of the naturalists of the Roosevelt African Expedition), is an ardent lover of wild birds and mammals.  The taming of wild creatures in the open is one of his pastimes, and his results serve well to illustrate the marvelous readiness of our wild neighbors to become close friends with man when protected.  I will quote from one of Mr. Loring’s letters on this subject: