Description and Distribution 63 



a result of the animars climbing habits. On the other 

 hand their fore legs do not show the wonderful muscu- 

 lar development that is one of the marked character- 

 istics of Ursus horrihilis. 



The Black Bear received its name informally, as it 

 were, from the early settlers of New England, where the 

 overwhelming majority of the species happened to be 

 black and where, by dint of saying, ''I saw a black 

 bear in the woods this afternoon," people came to refer 

 to the animal as the Black Bear. Later on the name 

 was sanctioned by scientific baptism and the animal 

 became officially known as the American Black Bear. 

 The designation, however, as we have seen, is by no 

 means universally descriptive. In the East, and in 

 the Middle West, an occasional brown specimen is met 

 with. But when the Rocky Mountain region is reached 

 there is a bewildering variation in the coloring of the 

 species. The majority of the breed are still black, but 

 at least a quarter and perhaps a third of the specimens 

 met with show a different coloration. Of these proba- 

 bly the seal-browns are the most numerous; but I have 

 seen Black Bears of every conceivable shade, from a 

 light cream color, through the yellow browns, to a jet 

 and glossy black never seen in the East. One animal 

 that I watched for some weeks in the mountains of 

 Wyoming was of a curious olive yellow from tip to tail. 

 In north-western Montana and north-eastern Idaho one 

 used to see many mouse-colored, or steel-blue-colored, 



