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Show 270 that scientists would not attack his observations as inaccurate or fanciful. His animal portraits have one continuous theme. Each is perfectly adapted to its own environment. So the animals and birds act as guides for human visitors. Muir had favorite, perhaps totemic animals. His three most famous portraits, of the water ouzel, the Douglas squirrel, and the mountain sheep, dramatized the behavior of perfectly adapted life in three major ecological communities of the Sierra, the river canyons, the forests, and the alpine heights. He considered writing about bears and coyotes as well, but did not in the 1870's. Clearly he did not want to confront the issue of predation, or deal with the violent aspects of Nature in his public utterances. His animals were wild, but peaceable. By 1873 he knew what he would say about the water ouzel. He would describe its life as "an echo of the mountain streams." "The Humming-Bird of the California Water-Falls" was part and parcel of the streams it inhabited. Nowhere could one find such "complete compliance to glacial conditions in the life of any other mountain bird, or animal of any kind." Muir believed that the flights of these birds, if charted, "would indicate the direction of the flow of the entire system of ancient glaciers." This had been the story of their dispersal through the Sierra. As for their origin, Muir fancied that they were spontaneous creations. Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit, they scarce suggest any other origin |