y one, and he was not making for the hotel. At
all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a
large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch
high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the
Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know.

As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel,
the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield
to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground
near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be
a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the
President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to
Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would
have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the
Park. In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane,
the thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and
makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is
it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse
into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to
that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should
have been, but a species new to the Park.

I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the
Madison River that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose they
found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they did
not compare with our Eastern brook trout.

I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined
some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots.
It imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of
things satanic.

One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe
the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the
most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw
in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number
of them. How blue they were,--breast and all! In voice and manner they
were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was
abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an
occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the
low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we
tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and