required to furnish wool sufficient for a pair of socks?" I endeavor
to point out the irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild
wool was not made for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient
as clothing for other animals, it is just the thing for the brave
mountain-dweller that wears it. Plain, however, as all this appears,
the quantity question rises again and again in all its commonplace
tameness. For in my experience it seems well-nigh impossible to
obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than
that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more flannel per sheep than
the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture has improved upon
wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is concerned, but all to the
contrary as far as a sheep's dress is concerned. If every wild sheep
inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame wool, probably only a few
would survive the dangers of a single season. With their fine limbs
muffled and buried beneath a tangle of hairless wool, they would
become short-winded, and fall an easy prey to the strong mountain
wolves. In descending precipices they would be thrown out of balance
and killed, by their taggy wool catching upon sharp points of rocks.
Disease would also be brought on by the dirt which always finds a
lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled and water-soaked condition
into which it falls during stormy weather.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the
world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant,
and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught
from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.