1936] MAMMALS OF OREGON 321 



different parts of the State. In many places, such as uninhabited 

 wildernesses and mountains, the bears can do no serious harm to 

 stock, game, and crops and should be considered a valuable and inter- 

 esting form of game. In farming, fruit-growing, and stock-raising 

 districts they may do serious harm, principally on the sheep ranges 

 where they sometimes acquire the habit of killing and feasting on 

 sheep. They rarely kill larger stock or game, except sick or crippled 

 animals, but a bear that has formed the habit of killing stock is 

 generally killed to prevent serious losses. The evidence should be 

 fairly considered, however, and the bears should not be destroyed 

 because they merely clean up carcasses of animals killed by 

 wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, or by hunters. Prime bearskins 

 in winter fur usually have a value of $10 to $20 each, which added to 

 the value of the meat and oil gives them a value about equal to that 

 of a deer. As game animals they also rank high for the chase as well 

 as for fur and trophies. 



EUARCTOS AMERICANUS ALTIFRONTALIS (ELLIOT) 

 OLYMPIC BLACK BEAR; ESKINKUA of the Wasco at The Dalles 



Ursus altifrontalis Elliot, Field Columb. Mus. Pub., Zool. Ser. 3: 234, 1903. 



Type. Collected at Lake Crescent, Clallum County, Wash., by D. G. Elliot 

 expedition in 1898. 



General characters. Size large, about as in the Rocky Mountain black bears ; 

 color mainly black, often wholly black, including nose, the brown form much 

 less common. Records show about 4 black to 1 brown west of the Cascades. 

 Skull generally short, wide, and high, the frontal region in old males often 

 abruptly and conspicuously elevated. Dentition rather heavy and upper molars 

 generally wider if not longer than in cinnamomum, its nearest associate on 

 the east. 



Measurements. No reliable skin measurements are available. The Skull of 

 an adult male from Hoodsport, Wash., measures: Basal length, 265 mm; 

 zygomatic breadth, 190. 



Distribution. Specimens of black bears from the Olympic Moun- 

 tains, western Washington and Oregon and northwestern California 

 show more or less typical characters of this form, but along the east- 

 ern slope of the Cascades in Oregon they combine the characters of 

 cinnamomum with those of altifrontalis so completely that often they 

 could as well be placed with one as the other (fig. 79). From Dufur 

 at the east base of Mount Hood, the skulls go more nearly with 

 altifrontalis, but from Paulina Lake, La Pine, Fort Kock, and Sil- 

 ver Lake they are clearly intermediate or nearer to cinnamtftnum. 

 No specimens have been examined from the Klamath country where 

 black bears were once common and where calif omianus might be 

 expected to occur, if anywhere in Oregon. 



General habits. In the densely forested range of these west-coast 

 black bears there was and still is a wealth of food and cover to sup- 

 port large numbers, and probably nowhere in North America were 

 bears originally more numerous. In 1909, on a trip down the coast 

 of Oregon the writer found them still abundant all along the way, 

 although that part of the State had been well settled for many years. 

 On one sheep ranch on Chetco Kiyer in southern Curry County more 

 than a hundred bears had been killed within the year without much 

 apparent impression being made on the general supply. In 1929 

 the Forest Service credits the Siskiyou National Forest in that same 



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