Characteristics and Habits 87 



that had been left fastened by a chain near a camp ; and 

 in one instance I came upon a grizzly that had just 

 killed a female and had eaten her two cubs. She had 

 been caught in a steel trap set by a trapper, and her 

 two cubs were with her. The male, finding her in this 

 predicament, had doubtless attacked the cubs, and 

 when, hampered as she was by the trap and clog, she 

 had attempted to defend them, he had killed her too. 



A female grizzly with young is one of the most dan- 

 gerous animals in the world. She will allow no other 

 bear of either sex to approach either her or them. And 

 this invariable attitude of her fully accounts, to my mind, 

 for her failure to breed while the young are still with 

 her. But the Black Bear mother is not only a compar- 

 atively inoffensive animal at all times, but she seems 

 to have no such lasting distrust of other members of 

 her own species. I have often seen an old Black Bear 

 asleep in the branches of a tree with her five or six- 

 months-old cubs frisking around on the ground, when 

 she must have been well aware that there were Black 

 Bears of the opposite sex in the neighborhood. This 

 is not to be put down to indifference on her part. It 

 simply means that the necessity for watchfulness has 

 passed. It therefore becomes easily understandable 

 that the Black Bear mother can afford, without risk 

 to her half-grown cubs, to breed every year in the 

 open; while the grizzly does not, until her young are 

 fully able to take care of themselves unaided, dare to 



