1062 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



few new gashes of powerful teeth. In the Davis Mountains, 

 on the ridge just north of Livermore, a yellow pine a foot and a 

 half through has served as a bear-register for apparently ten 

 or twenty years. It was deeply scarred on all sides, from 4 to 

 6 feet from the ground, but on one side, from 5 to 6 feet up, the 

 bark had long been cut away, and the dry weathered wood was 

 splintered and gashed with deep grooves of various ages. Two 

 fresh sets of tooth-prints showed on opposite sides of the tree 

 near the top of the ring, and one little Bear had lately tried his 

 teeth in the green bark about 4 feet from the ground. At the 

 head of a gulch on the east side of Limpia Creek stood another 

 big yellow pine that had been similarly treated, and on it, as on 

 the others, the upper limit of reach was about 6 feet from the 

 ground. Apparently the Bear at each visit to one of these 

 register trees had given but a single bite, leaving the marks of 

 an opposing pair of canines." 



Finally, I can add my own testimony. I have seen many, 

 yes hundreds, of these bear-trees, chiefly in the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. They are always by some well-worn pathway or trail 

 of the Bears, and are made and used by Bears of all species. 



What is their meaning and purpose ? For it is very cer- 

 tain that such a remarkable and universal Bear habit must have 

 some good object. 



I think there can be no doubt, as I have elsewhere and 

 years ago said in print, that these are Bear 'sign-boards,' 

 methods of communicating certain information to the Bears. 

 They answer, I believe firmly, the same purpose as the urinary 

 signal posts of dogs, Wolves, and P'oxes. 



A creature with such exquisite power of smell as a Bear 

 has no difficulty in reading at once, by touch and taint on the 

 register trunk, that here there has recently been a Bear of such 

 sex and species, a personal friend or foe, as the case may be — 

 and the trail shows that he went in such a direction; by follow- 

 ing that trail he can overtake that Bear, or, if he prefers it, he 

 can expend his sudden outburst of feeling on the offending but 

 defenceless trunk. 



