berta and
the coast mountains at least as far as Skaguay, and Yukon Territory
generally, all contain grizzlies, and the sportsman who goes out for
sheep, caribou and moose is reasonably certain to see half a dozen bears
and kill at least one or two. In those countries, the grizzly species
will hold forth long after all killable grizzlies have vanished from the
United States.

I think that it is now time for California, Montana, Washington, Oregon,
Idaho and Wyoming to give grizzly bears protection of some sort.
Possibly the situation in those states calls for a five-year close
season. Even British Columbia should now place a bag limit on this
species. This has seemed clear to me ever since two of my friends killed
(in the spring of 1912) _six_ grizzlies in one week! But Provincial Game
Warden A. Bryan Williams says that at present it would be impossible to
impose a bag limit of one per year on the grizzlies of British Columbia;
and Mr. Williams is a sincere game-protector.

THE BROWN BEARS OF ALASKA.--These magnificent monsters present a
perplexing problem, which I am inclined to believe can be satisfactorily
solved by the Biological Survey only in short periods, say of three or
four years each. Naturally, the skin hunters of Alaska ardently desire
the skins of those bears, for the money they represent. That side of the
bear problem does not in the least appeal to the ninety odd millions of
people who live this side of Alaska. The skins of the Alaskan brown
bears have little value save as curiosities, nailed upon the wall, where
they can not be stepped upon and injured. The _hunting_ of those bears,
however, is a business for men; and it is partly for that reason they
should be preserved. A bear-hunt on the Alaska Peninsula, Admiralty or
Montagu Islands, is an event of a lifetime, and with a bag limit of
_one_ brown bear, the species would be quite safe from extermination.

[Illustration: THE WICHITA NATIONAL BISON HERD
Presented by the New York Zoological Society]

In Alaska there is some dissatisfaction over the protection accorded the
big brown bears; but those rules are right _as far as they go_! A
governor of Alaska once said to me: "The preservation of the game of
Alaska should be left to the _people_ of Alaska. It is their game; and
they will preserve it all right!"

The answer? _Not by a long shot_!

Only three things were wrong with the ex-governor's view:

1.--The game of Alaska does _not_ belong to th