The sun., 1919-06-22

" the grizzly bear Enos A. Mills says
be made the statement that bears would
be good 10 us if we were good to the bears.
WheretpSiI a small boy pertinentIy in
quired.s if'What do you do to be good to
bearsf., ~.
By being good to bears Mr.. Mills seems
to understand making friends with them
if they are grownups, and if they are
small bringing home good things to eat
for them in your pockets, playing with
them and holding them in your arms and
rocking them to'sleep. The Indian squaw
Mr.. Mills once saw was being good to two
little orphan bears when she sucked them
for weeks. The cubs weighed hardly more
than pound each, since in proportion to
its size the grizzly is one Of the smallest
animals at its birth.
But Notwithstanding the many stories
Mr.. Mills tells Of the amiable and humane
qualities of the grizzly, most of US if we
are where grizzlies are around will still
take considerable satisfaction in the fact
Of natural history that grizzly cannot
climb a tree; and even when he comes
walking toward rs like a man shall be
inclined to.trust him no more than Bel
gian would trust German.
1t was Gov. De Witt Clinton Of New
York, according to Mr.. Mills, who started
us all wrong on the subject Of the grizzly.
Lewis and Clark first mentioned the
grizzly in their journal in 1904, and few
years later Gov. Clinton in an address be-
fore the Literary and Philosophical So
ciety of New York said: "There is the
white, brown, or grizzly bear, the fero-
cious tyrant of the American woods-it
exists, the terror of the savages, the ty-
rant of all other animals, devouring alike
man and beast and defying the attacks Of
a whole tribe of Indians"
Mr.. Mills, who probably knows as much
about the grizzly bear of the Rocky
Mountains as any man in the country,
says he knows of no authentic instance OF
a grizzly bear eating human flesh. He
says the grizzly, like the rest of us, OBJ
jects TO being killed, and will fight if at
tackled. Even the cattle killing grizzly, Mr..
Mills says, is the exception-like Old
Nose, the outlaw grizzly that was finally
shot on Black Mountain in Colorado, af-
YER he himself had killed five men (who
were trying to kill him) and 800 cattle, at
a damage Of more than $4,000. Old
Nose was 40 years old when he was
finally taken and In excellent health.
But generally speaking, a man who
wants to tell a good bear story should be
careful to specify that the bear was not a
grizzly. Mr.. Mills describes the grizzly
as the greatest animal on the North Amer
lean continent and probably in the world.
He says the grizzly is superior in men
talty to the horse, the dog and even the
gray wolf" He gives innumerabIe exam
pies of the sagacity and reasoning power
of the grizzly. A man owning a Connecti-
cut farm could wish for a grizzly on the
place to get rid of the stopes and build
his walls for him. Mr. Mills says:
when large stone Is encountered in
his digging the grizzly grabs it with both
forepaws, shakes and tears it loose from
the earth and hurls it aside. 1 have seen
him toss huge stones over his shoulder and
throw larger ones forward with one paw"
Erecting sort of stone barrier around
q hole, Mr.. Mills describes the grizzly
as stopping now and then to cock an eye
and then perhaps shifting n stone to an
other position. We can imagine a sensi-
tive grizzly initiating the example of a
stone wall artist who asked his employer
if he calculated that the wall he was
building was straight, and when the man
thus invited admitted that a part of the
wall might be just the least little bit
crooked, told the man to build the wall
himself and picked up his hammer and