Characteristics and Habits 203 



I have caught them when they first came from the den, 

 and when the earth was covered with a thick mantle of 

 snow, and have then taken them from their mothers, and 

 for weeks fed them milk and such soft foods as I could 

 make them eat; and then found that, when they were old 

 enough, they would go out and, wholly untaught, select 

 the food that the old bears were eating at the time. One 

 black bear cub that I took in this way I kept with me all 

 through the summer and fall hunting, having caught him 

 early in June, in the Bitter Root Mountains, when the 

 ground was covered with snow and when he first came 

 from the den. He was then a little fellow not larger than a 

 common house cat, and cried for his mother the greater 

 part of the time for a couple of weeks. 



This cub I took about with me all over the mountains 

 for more than four months, and I learned many a thing 

 about bears from him. Whenever, as he grew older, we 

 were in camp and he wished to get loose, as he would show 

 by pulling at his chain and bawling, I would free him, 

 and then follow to see what he was after. He invariably 

 made for some bottom land and dug for roots, or nipped 

 off the grass where it grew young and tender. I have seen 

 him dig more than a foot down into the ground for some 

 root that had not yet sent up its shoot, and — although how 

 the young rascal could tell just where to dig was beyond 

 me— he always found his tidbit. Moreover, he knew the 

 berry bushes from the others by the same inherited knowl- 

 edge. He would reach up and pull down the branches of 

 these to examine them, although there might not be any 

 berries on them at the time, and he never, that I saw, 

 made a single mistake. He soon came to pay no attention 



