e Yellowstone National Park, a most
beautiful elk now separated from the Rocky Mountain species. Besides
this herd there are only a few survivors of the once innumerable herds
of the Pacific Coast, one little bunch in California, and a few
scattered individuals in the mountains of Oregon and Washington. It is
excessively hard to form any correct estimate of how many remain;
probably there are at least a thousand, possibly several times that
number. At all events, there is a scattered herd large enough to insure
the existence of the species if they might now be protected. Unfortunately
the sentiment of the community in the vicinity of the Olympics is just
about what it was in Colorado in the seventies and in the early
eighties--almost complete apathy, so far as taking effective precaution
is concerned, to prevent the killing of these animals in violation of the
law. I saw one superb herd south of the headwaters of the Elwha, and was
informed that in the winter a large number come lower down into the valley
of that river; here and elsewhere the finest specimens are slaughtered by
head-hunters for the market, and by anyone, in fact, who may covet their
hides or meat or their "tusks," now unfortunately very valuable.

Presumably, in so killing them, picked specimens are selected. Of course
the finest bulls may not thus be systematically eliminated without
causing the general deterioration of the herd. Nature's method of
progress is by the survival of the fittest. Man reverses this so soon
as cupidity makes him the foe of wild animals. The country here is an
excessively hard one to get about in with stock, owing to its very
rugged nature and to the scarcity of feed, so that there is slight
danger of the extermination of these elk by sportsmen during the open
season. In the winter, however, the hunters have them at their mercy. I
was assured by one very level-headed man that, in the winter of 1902-3,
two men killed seventeen elk from the Elwha herd. Since the individuals
who killed the elk are well known and are practically unmolested, the
immunity which they enjoy tempts others to similar violation of the
law. More recently still, during this last winter, the game warden of
Washington reports the finding of the carcasses of nineteen elk, killed
for their tusks.

This country, with its splendid glaciers and mountains covered with
snow, presents quite the most beautiful scenery to be found within the
limits of the United Stat