BEARS. 119 



confined to the Indian region, including the Philippine Islands and the Indian Archipela'To, 

 Formosa, China, and Japan ; but a species from Hungary, one from Mount Atlas, and another 

 from the Cordillera of the Andes, Sweden, have also been reckoned Sun Bears, so that no o-eo- 

 graphical limit can be given for them different from that of the other Bears. 



If close affinity of species be a mark of high organization, the Bears must stand high, and 

 they furnish illustrations more suited for Mr. Darwin's views of gradual change by variation than 

 any others which occur to us. If the same consolidation of sijecies which some authors practise in 

 l^lants were carried out in animals, we should have bvit one species for the whole northern hemisphere. 

 On the other hand, authors who have a different constitution of mind have multiijlied instead of 

 diminishing the number of species. Dr. Gray, in a recent monograph of the Bears, has not only 

 preserved TIrsus arctos as distinct from the American brown Bear, but has recorded four named 

 varieties and eight named sub-varieties of it, an evidence of instability in the species which 

 certainly, at least, cannot be said to be unfavourable to the other view. But while admitting the 

 Brown, Black, Norwegian, Pyrenean, Polish, and Siberian Bears, to be mere varieties. Dr. Gray 

 has gone still further in the opposite direction, for he has adopted the views of Eversmann,* 

 who held that there were two species of Bear confounded under the name Ursis arctos, — the 

 Carrion Bear, feeding much on flesh, and the Ant Bear, feeding chiefly on insects ; and has 

 divided them into two separate genera, — the old genus, Ursus, for the Carrion Bear, and a new 

 genus, Mymarctos, for the Ant Bear. The differential characters, as stated by Eversmann and 

 Gray, are drawn entirely from the skull ; and one is rather surprised at finding the doctor 

 give so much weight to them after the caution he gives us at the commencement of his monograph 

 to distrust such characters. He says, " The examination of the series of skulls of Bears in the 

 Museum, like the examination of the series of bones of the ViverridoB, has strongly impressed me with 

 the uncertainty that must always attend the determination of fossil bones, or indeed of bones of all 

 animals, when we have onlj^ the skulls or other bones of the body to compare with one another. 

 There can be no dovibt that the study and comparison of the bones of the different species is very 

 important ; — that the skull and teeth afford some of the best characters for the distinction of genera 

 and species ; but few zoologists and -palasontologists have made sufficient allowance for the variations 

 that the bones of the same species assume. In the Bears I have observed that there is often more 

 difference between the skulls of Bears of the same species from the same locality than between 

 the skulls of two imdoubted species from verjr different habitats and with very different habits." 

 And he adds, as an illustration of the caution which should be used in dealing with such 

 characters, " the fact that M. do Blainville considers the Californian Grizzly Bear, after a very 

 careful study and comparison of its bones, to be only a variety of the common European Bear, 

 shows how a most experienced and accurate osteologist may be misled by placing too much confidence 

 in a single branch of study."f But other naturalists, who are not open to the objection of being 

 solely devoted to a single branch of study, say the same thing as De Blainville. Middendorf docs 

 so. According to him the species found in Europe and Nortliern Asia and the Grizzly Bear 

 of North America are all varieties of the Ursus arctos ; and he gives a series of minute measure- 

 ments and comparisons in support of his conclusion. And although Dr. Gray rather disables his 

 judgment because he has not distinguished between the Ant Bear and the Carrion Bear, I 



* Eversmann, in " Bullet, de la Soc. Imp. des Nat.," 1840, p. 8. 

 t Gray, in " Proc. Zoolog. Soc." 180-1, p. G84. 



