ZOOLOGY. 4'J 



dropped his bag and ran. When afterwards he returned, having gained courage and assistance, 

 as might have been anticipated, the sack was empty. 



The track of the hind foot of the grizzly bear is very like that made by the foot of a negro ; 

 one of the thousand things which give the bear a kind of human character. His attitudes and 

 motions, his arm-like use of the fore leg, his fun and malice, and, if we may believe the hunters, 

 his festive games, wrestling matches and dances, are very human. 



URSUS AMERICANUS. 



Black Bear; Cinnamon Bear. 



Ursus americomm, Bahid, Gen. Rep. Mammals, 1857, 225, 228. 



The black bear inhabits all portions of Washington and Oregon Territories, extending its 

 range into California only near the coast. Near Fort Jones it has been occasionally killed, but 

 south of that point it is replaced by the grizzly. In passing from California to Oregon, by way 

 of the Klamath lakes, we found no traces of it till we reached the headwaters of the Des 

 Chutes river ; there we saw no grizzly "sign," but the black bear was evidently very abundant. 

 Several were seen by the members of our party, but they were very shy, and none were killed. 

 The light volcanic soil, composed of disintegrated pumice, of the region bordering the main fork 

 of the Des Chutes, as it issues from the Cascade mountains, sustains little vegetation except the 

 yellow and spruce pines, (P. brachyptera and P. contorta,) and receives and retains the impress 

 of the feet of passing animals with almost the fidelity of snow. On this surface, therefore, we 

 had an authentic record of the fauna of the region. The elk, the mule, the white-tailed deer, 

 the antelope, the badger, the red fox, the coyote and large gray wolf, Townsend's hare, the 

 artemisia hare, all had there made their marks — even the striped squirrels, Spermophilus 

 lateralis and Tamias townsendii, had recorded their visits to the bushes of red gooseberry and 

 ceanothus, which furnish them with food. Among these hieroglyphics, by far the most con- 

 spicuous, and perhaps most numerous, were those in which the black bear had told us of 

 his various wanderings. His tracks, deeply sunk in the yielding surface, resembled those of 

 a horse, only set more closely together; and during the interval that had elapsed since winter's 

 rains and snows had obliterated all former records, the bear had passed and repassed so fre- 

 quently that the ground in some localities was tracked up like a barn yard. 



The subsistence of the bears of the region I have described is evidently, for the most part, 

 vegetable. The manzanita, (Arbutus laurifolia,) the wild plum and cherry, which fruit profusely 

 and are very low, and especially the whortleberry, which covers whole hill-sides in the Cascade 

 mountains, furnishing an unheard of quantity of large and fine fruit ; all these assist in making 

 up their bill of fare. Rarely, too, we saw trees of the yellow pine bearing marks of bears' teeth, 

 where the/ had torn off the bark to get at the succulent inner layer, which is capable of sustain- 

 ing life, :ind to which the Indians very generally have recourse when pressed by hunger. I 

 have k iown the black bear of the eastern States strip off the bark of the hemlock spruce 

 (A. canadensis) for the same purpose. 



The brown or cinnamon bear, generally regarded by naturalists as a variety of the black 

 species, inhabits the same territory and shares the habits and the food of the black bear. 



I made every effort to secure good sj)ecimens of the brown bear in order to settle the question of 

 its relations, for the hunters and Indians whom I consulted generally regarded them as distinct, 

 but I could only obtain the prepared skins. Lieutenant Crook, United States army, a thorough 

 sportsman and a careful and accurate observer, tells me that he killed a brown bear in Scott's 

 valley, California, in a tree, engaged in tearing off a branch from luldcli a hornet's nest was sus- 

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