THE PARTI-COLORED BEAR 619 



Mr. Sanderson says that in the forests of Mysore he was in the ^habit of shooting 

 bears by following them with trackers ; and that, as they seldom left off feeding be- 

 fore nine in the morning, it was generally possible by starting at daybreak to come 

 up with them before they had retired to rest for the day. If, however, the party did 

 not succeed in this, the bears would generally be found lying asleep under the shade 

 of a clump of bamboos, or a rock, as there were no caves in the district into which 

 they could disappear. Elephants, it appears, have a great dislike to bears, and on 

 this account, as well as from the rocky nature of the country generally inhabited by 

 these animals, are but rarely employed in bear shooting. Mr. Sanderson was also 

 in the habit of hunting bears with large dogs, and dispatching them when brought 

 to bay with his hunting knife ; and in this exciting sport was very successful. 



Regarding the sport afforded by the sloth-bear, the same hunter observes that 

 " bear shooting is one of the most entertaining of sports. Some sportsmen have 

 spoken disparagingly of it, and I daresay sitting up half the night watching for a 

 bear's return to his cave, and killing him without adventure, may be poor fun. . . . 

 But bear shooting conducted on proper principles, with two or three bears afoot to- 

 gether, lacks neither excitement nor amusement. It is not very dangerous sport, 

 as the animal can be so easily seen, while he is not so active -as a tiger or a panther. 

 -Still he is very tough, and to anyone who would value him for his demonstrations, 

 he would appear sufficiently formidable. If a bear charges he can generally be 

 killed without more ado by a shot in the head when within two paces. The belief 

 that a bear rises on his hind-legs when near his adversary, and thus offers a shot at 

 the horseshoe mark on his chest, is groundless. I have shot several bears within a 

 few feet, and they were still coming on on all fours. No doubt when a bear reaches 

 liis man he rises to claw and bite him, but not before." 



Jerdon states that in the extreme south of India, among certain hill tribes 

 know as Polygars, sloth-bears used to be hunted with large dogs, and when brought 

 to bay were attacked by the hunters with long poles smeared at the end with bird- 

 lime. The birdlime caused the shaggy coat of the bears to become fixed to the end 

 of the pole, so that the animals soon become firmly held. A single fragment of a 

 bone of the fore-limb discovered in a cave in Madras proves that the sloth-bear has 

 been an inhabitant of India since a period when several kinds of extinct Mammals 

 flourished there. And the extinct Theobald's bear from the Siwalik hills, men- 

 tioned on p. 26, serves to indicate that the sloth-bear is a specially-modified form 

 derived from bears belonging to the typical genus, since the skull of that extinct 

 species presents characteristics intermediate between those of ordinary bears and 

 that of the sloth-bear. 



THE PARTI-COLORED BEAR 

 Genus sEluropus 



A large number of the Mammals from the highlands of Tibet belong to types 

 quite unlike those found in any other part of the world ; and in no case is this 

 dissimilarity more marked than in the animal which may be termed the parti-colored 

 bear {Ailuropus melanolcucus} . 



