234 The Grizzly Bear 



where men have been attacked by the grizzly bear in 

 which the offender, if arraigned before a jury of his peers, 

 could not have successfully maintained a plea of self- 

 defence. Of course, in judging the bears, one must take 

 into consideration the view-point of the bear. A mother 

 with cubs who charges an intruder approaching too close 

 to her; a sleeping bear over whom a man stumbles in a 

 wood and who strikes him down, — these must be given 

 the benefit of their own doubts. 



I do not think that this aspect of the grizzly's nature 

 can be better summed up than by Dr. Hornaday's ex- 

 cellent dictum: "The grizzly's temper is defensive, not 

 aggressive; and, unless the animal is cornered, or thinks 

 he is cornered, he always flees from man." 



In short, the notion that the grizzly roams about 

 seeking for whomsoever he may devour, is pure nonsense, 

 and that, ordinarily, he will attack on sight, I believe to 

 be equally a myth. Nevertheless, as far as we can judge, 

 those animals that lived a century ago along the banks 

 of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in Montana, 

 seem to have been, as Lewis and Clark declare them, 

 more courageous and less wary than others of their species 

 found elsewhere, either then or since. 



These writers ascribe this to their inhabiting a game 

 country and havjng become used to slaughter. But we 

 are wholly unable to judge how far their evident belief 

 that these bears preyed habitually on the buffalo and other 

 game is of a piece with their other misconceptions of 

 them. They met them in the neighborhood of buffalo, 

 just as I have met them in the neighborhood of elk; and 

 that they were flesh eaters is proved by their stealing 



