realize that they are safe, but, being natural scavengers and foul feeders, they have come to recognize the garbage heaps of the hotels as their special sources of food supply.  Throughout the summer months they come to all the hotels in numbers, usually appearing in the late afternoon or evening, and they have become as indifferent to the presence of men as the deer themselves—­some of them very much more indifferent.  They have now taken their place among the recognized sights of the Park, and the tourists are nearly as much interested in them as in the geysers.

[Illustration:  Black bears at hotel garbage Heap.]

It was amusing to read the proclamations addressed to the tourists by the Park management, in which they were solemnly warned that the bears were really wild animals, and that they must on no account be either fed or teased.  It is curious to think that the descendants of the great grizzlies which were the dread of the early explorers and hunters should now be semi-domesticated creatures, boldly hanging around crowded hotels for the sake of what they can pick up, and quite harmless so long as any reasonable precaution is exercised.  They are much safer, for instance, than any ordinary bull or stallion, or even ram, and, in fact, there is no danger from them at all unless they are encouraged to grow too familiar or are in some way molested.  Of course among the thousands of tourists there is a percentage of thoughtless and foolish people; and when such people go out in the afternoon to look at the bears feeding they occasionally bring themselves into jeopardy by some senseless act.  The black bears and the cubs of the bigger bears can readily be driven up trees, and some of the tourists occasionally do this.  Most of the animals never think of resenting it; but now and then one is run across which has its feelings ruffled by the performance.  In the summer of 1902 the result proved disastrous to a too inquisitive tourist.  He was traveling with his wife, and at one of the hotels they went out toward the garbage pile to see the bears feeding.  The only bear in sight was a large she, which, as it turned out, was in a bad temper because another party of tourists a few minutes before had been chasing her cubs up a tree.  The man left his wife and walked toward the bear to see how close he could get.  When he was some distance off she charged him, whereupon he bolted back toward his wife.  The bear overtook him, knocked him down and bit him severely.  But the man’s wife, without hesitation, attacked the bear with that thoroughly feminine weapon, an umbrella, and frightened her off.  The man spent several weeks in the Park hospital before he recovered.  Perhaps the following telegram sent by the manager of the Lake Hotel to Major Pitcher illustrates with sufficient clearness the mutual relations of the bears, the tourists, and the guardians of the public weal in the Park.  The original was sent me by Major Pitcher.  It runs: