Characteristics and Habits 215 



twenty-year limit. Of course, bears in captivity may, on 

 an average, live longer than those exposed to the dangers 

 and vicissitudes of the open. Yet they have not the induce- 

 ments to live so long, nor do they, I believe, grow so large 

 as those in the wild state. Those in captivity have neither 

 the fields to roam in, nor the streams to plunge into, nor 

 the sunlight that a bear loves, nor the exercise that all 

 bears take so freely in the wilds. All these things work 

 together for the health and vigor of the bears in far places. 

 On the other hand, those confined in man-made dens and 

 pits have the certainty of food, security from enemies, and 

 the vegetating chances of a life of sloth. Nevertheless, 

 something of the allotted age of free bears may be 

 inferred from the known life span of those in captivity. 

 On March 22, 1909, a grizzly was chloroformed in the 

 Central Park Menagerie, in New York, that had been 

 purchased from Barnum's Circus in 1884, and had, during 

 these twenty-five years, been confined in the pits in New 

 York. 



That many bears in the open live to what, for a bear, 

 constitutes a ripe old age, I am able to testify. I have 

 seen them so decrepit that they walked like octogenarians, 

 and I have killed those that showed unmistakable evi- 

 dences of being full of years. Strangely enough, I have 

 never yet seen or found dead a grizzly bear that had died 

 a natural death. In no one of the caves where they hiber- 

 nate have I ever found a solitary bone, and, although I 

 have more than once seen an aged bear in a certain locality 

 one season, and found the next year that he had disap- 

 peared, I have never, even after careful search, found 

 trace of his remains or hint of the manner of his end. 



