At one time Roosevelt and his companions camped at the Yellowstone Canyon, with the river four or five hundred feet below them. Mountain sheep appeared on the opposite side. The rules of the park forbade hunting, so the sheep showed no fear of them. Between the sheep and the riverbed there was a precipice. The question arose among the watchers as to whether these four-footed creatures could pass down this steep declivity to the riverbed. Roosevelt asserted that they could. Then he entered his tent to shave. When the shaving was half completed someone shouted that the sheep were going down. Roosevelt rushed out, with a towel around his throat and one side of his face white with lather. He watched the sure-footed sheep making their descent with great interest. Then he said: “I knew they could do it.” While Roosevelt was on this trip in the Yellowstone he remarked: “I heard a Bullock’s-oriole!” “You may have heard one,” said a man familiar with the country, “but I doubt it. Those birds won’t come for two weeks yet.” “I caught two bird notes which could not be those of any bird except an oriole,” the Colonel insisted. “You may have the song twisted,” said another member of the party. That evening at supper Roosevelt suddenly laid down his knife and fork, exclaiming, “Look! Look!” On a shrub before the window was a Bullock’s-oriole. This vindication of his hearing pleased the Colonel immensely. Burroughs, after visiting the Colonel at Sagamore Hill in 1907, wrote that the appearance of a new warbler in the woods “seemed an event that threw the affairs of state and the Presidential succession into the background.” He told a political visitor at that time that it would be impossible for him to discuss politics then as he wanted to talk and hunt birds, and for the purpose he took his visitor with him. “Fancy,” said Burroughs, “a President of the United States stalking rapidly across bushy fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with the one idea of showing to his visitors the black-throated green warbler!” Roosevelt told Burroughs that when he was President he would sometimes go on bird excursions in the White House grounds. People passing would stop and stare at him as he stood gazing up into the trees. “No doubt they thought me insane,” he said. “Yes,” added Mrs. Roosevelt, who was present, “and as I was always with him, they no doubt thought that I was the nurse that had him in charge.” Roosevelt’s effective war on “nature fakirs” could not have been possible had he not known intimately the habits and nature of birds and animals, and never was he found wanting. Roosevelt’s intense interest in wild animals, it may be noted in passing, showed itself in his early boyhood. Of the minister of his church he demanded to know the nature of a “zeal.” “What is a zeal?” repeated the puzzled parson. “You read about him in the Psalms,” said Ted.