Characteristics and Habits 75 



taken refuge there when the owners interfered and 

 rescued the youngster. Here, as I see it, was a case of 

 artificial separation which, once the mother had ac- 

 cepted, placed her, as far as her own feelings went, in 

 exactly the same frame of mind toward her cubs as 

 though she had abandoned them in the natural course 

 of things and their company had afterward been forced 

 upon her. 



Neither the Black Bear nor the grizzly is really a 

 sociable animal, but free Black Bears occasionally play 

 together, which grizzlies never seem to do. Under 

 ordinary circumstances, however, Black Bears have a 

 funny trick of pretending not to see each other when 

 they meet. If one of them comes into a marshy 

 meadow or a small open glade in the woods where one 

 or two others are already feeding, he will make the most 

 laughable pretence of not seeing them. He will stop 

 at the edge of the opening and go through all the mo- 

 tions of examining the country, carefully looking, how- 

 ever, everywhere but in the direction of the other 

 bears; all of which is vastly amusing to one familiar 

 with the keenness of his senses and the alertness of his 

 attention, and the practical impossibility of getting 

 within seeing or hearing distance of him without 

 his knowing it. Meanwhile the bears already on the 

 ground play their part in the little comedy with all the 

 good will in the world. They have undoubtedly been 

 aware of the approach of the newcomer long before any 



