ORDER CARNIVORA: CARNIVORES 229 



SYNONYM: Ursus schmitzi Matschie (1917). 



FIGS.: Hemprich and Ehrenberg, 1828, pi. 1; Wolf, 1861, pi. 17 (specimen 

 from the Persian Gulf) ; Pocock, 1937, p. 807, fig. 



The Syrian Bear is now extinct, or nearly so, in Palestine and 

 Lebanon but survives in rather indefinite numbers to the northward 

 and eastward, where the exact limits of its range have not been 

 determined. 



The type specimen (which was not full-grown) was described as 

 uniform fulvous-white; it was smaller than Ursus arctos and had 

 long ears. Its head and body measured 3 feet 8 inches; tail, 6 

 inches ; height at shoulder, 2 feet 4 inches. Other skins were said to 

 be fulvous or sometimes almost wholly brown. (Hemprich and 

 Ehrenberg, 1828.) 



The range, according to Flower (1929, p. 149), is "western Asia: 

 in certain mountainous localities from Asia Minor and Syria to 

 Persia." 



Bodenheimer (1935, p. 114) writes: 



The Syrian Bear . . . was not uncommon in N. Palestine in Biblical times. 

 David boasts of having strangled a bear, which had attacked his herd (I Regum 

 17, 34) and two bears killed the 42 boys who had scoffed at the prophet 

 Elisha (II Regum 2, 24). Tristram encountered one in a ravine near Tiberias, 

 near Beisan and in the Jolan. Schmitz seems to have seen the last specimens on 

 the southern Hermon (1911, 1913). ... It has not been a menace to flocks of 

 sheep and goats for a long time, but occasional visits to vine-yards and 

 fruit-groves are still reported from Syria. The Bear is extinct on the Hermon 

 and Anti-lebanon, mainly because it was so drastically hunted by German 

 officers during the war. It is reported to have survived on the Lebanon. 



J. C. Phillips writes (in litt., July 20, 1936) that there were 

 supposed to be a few bears left on Mount Hermon when he was 

 there in 1912. 



The following information, supplied by Dr. William Van Dyck 

 and Professor West, both of the American University in Beirut, is 

 transmitted by Theodore Marriner (in litt., 1936) : 



"Shortly after the World War, when there were a large number of 

 army rifles in mountain villages, the number of Syrian bears . . . 

 was greatly reduced. They were, in fact, exterminated in some parts 

 of the Anti-Lebanon range, but a few are still reported in the less 

 accessible parts of both the Anti-Lebanon and Lebanon ranges. 

 Farther north, in the Gebel Ansariyah and in the Amanus range of 

 northern Syria and southern Turkey, they are still quite common 

 in the more wooded sections. At the present time no definite attempt 

 is being made to preserve the Syrian Bear, although the government 

 policy of forbidding civilians to carry rifles indirectly helps towards 

 this end." 



Aharoni (1930, pp. 336-337) gives the following account (some- 

 what freely translated) : "During the war, while stationed in Leba- 



