DESCRIPTION AND DISTRIBUTION 



The American Black Bear, or, as our friends with 

 the big spectacles have named him, Ursus americanus 

 (Tallas), has by very long odds the widest distribution 

 of any North American bear. 



The polar bear Btaj-s well inside the Arctic Circle. 

 The big brown Alaskan bears are only foimd in certain 

 localities on or near the north-west coast of the conti- 

 nent. The grizzlies inhabit, or inhabited, the mountain 

 r^oas of the extreme west from Mexico to Alaska. 

 But the Black Bear is found in the central and northern 

 parts of the United States and in the central and south- 

 em parts of Canada from the Atlantic coast to the shore 

 of the Pacific Ocean; and his half brothers, or first 

 coasins, or whatever they are, in Florida, Louisiana, 

 Texas, and Old Mexico, are so much like him that it 

 takes a specialist and sometimes a post-mortem ex- 

 amination to tell them apart. 



I have watched and studied these animals in the 

 open for nearly thirty years, and have played eaves- 

 dropper and Peeping Tom times out of number when 

 they were unconscioas of my presence ; and yet I have 

 had dealings with Black Bears in Texas and Old Mexico 



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