88 The Black Bear 



associate with their possible enemies — the cantanker- 

 ous males of the tribe. 



The records of the Lodges contain one or two inter- 

 esting notes relating to these matters. The first time 

 that their original pair of Black Bears bred they did 

 not separate the mother and father, and the first in- 

 timation that they had of the birth of cubs was the 

 appearance of the father at the mouth of the den with 

 a dead cub in its mouth. After that they took care 

 to give the female separate quarters. Again, the only 

 two occasions during the last sixteen or eighteen years 

 on which this female has failed to breed have been in 

 years when her cubs were allowed to remain with her 

 throughout the summer, and when, as the owners 

 state, she was so taken up with them that she refused 

 to have anything to do with her mate. 



This is exactly the attitude that my observations 

 have led me to assume as habitual on the part of the 

 free grizzly. And I imagine that the Black Bear 

 mother adopted it in this case because, in the narrow 

 quarters of a twenty-foot bear-pit, she was afraid to 

 relax her vigilance, as she doubtless would have felt 

 justified in doing in her natural surroundings. 



Another point of difference between the two species 

 that agrees with the earlier abandonment of its young 

 by the Black Bear is the fact that these appear to 

 breed at least a year earlier than the young of the 

 grizzly. The latter, as we have seen, only separate 



