Characteristics and Habits 89 



and den up individually at the end of their third sum- 

 mer and breed the following year at the earliest; but 

 I have seen Black Bear mothers that could not have 

 weighed over a hundred pounds, and that made the 

 most amusing and appealing picture of youthful 

 responsibility. 



There is a widespread notion that bears are given 

 to travelling in company; that they are sociable ani- 

 mals, and that bear families — father, mother, and 

 children — are not only to be met with in the woods, 

 but den up together for the winter. This is not true. 

 Only mothers and cubs or occasionally half-grown cubs 

 of one litter ever travel together. I have never seen 

 the slightest evidence that grown bears, male and 

 female, ever travel in couples, even in the mating 

 season; and I have never known a case where full- 

 grown animals of any bear species denned up together. 

 These statements apply no less to the Black Bear than 

 to the grizzly. 



Another point on which there is much popular mis- 

 conception and disbelief is the extreme smallness of 

 bear cubs at birth. This, at first glance, is not only 

 astonishing, but to many people seems almost incredi- 

 ble. ''How is it possible,^' they ask, ''and why is it 

 advantageous for an animal as large as a bear to have 

 young so small? Why, the puppies of a forty-pound 

 dog are as large as the cubs of the four-hundred pound 

 bear!" Yet the fact remains, and in the case of the 



