328 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



parks and are steadily growing more restricted. A limited number 

 of grizzlies on the national parks do little harm and are always a 

 great interest and attraction to visitors. 



URSUS IDAHOENSIS MEKRIAM 



IDAHO GRIZZLY; HOHOST of the " Chopunnish " (L. and C.) ; SONAHA of the 



Piute at Burns 



Ursus idahoensis Merriam, North Amer. Fauna No. 41, p. 54, 1918. 



Type. Collected on North Fork Teton River, eastern Idaho, by Richard 

 Leigh (Beaver Dick) in 1874. Preserved by C. Hart Merriam. 



General characters. Size medium, much less than horribilis; skull of old 

 male well arched in outline ; frontal region elevated and frontal shield slightly 

 convex; rostrum long; canines rather light; molars heavy; posterior upper 

 molars long and widely rounded posteriorly. Skull of female long, low, slender, 

 with narrow zygomatic arches, and very small teeth. External characters not 

 known. 



Measurement of type skull, fully adult male: Basal length, 317 mm; zygo- 

 matic breadth, 206. 



Distribution and habitat. The skull of an old female grizzly killed 

 near Billy Meadows, on the Imnaha National Forest in 1908, by 

 Joseph K. Carper, is considered by Merriam as typical idahoensis. 

 This would naturally imply that the form of grizzly bear once com- 

 mon throughout the Blue Mountain section of Oregon (fig. 80) was 

 also of this species, but the skull of another old female grizzly from 

 the same locality, killed by the same hunter a year later arid pre- 

 sented to Merriam for the Biological Survey collection, by J. T. 

 Jardine, then of the Forest Service, cannot reasonably be referred 

 to the same form. This skull, with slightly dished or concave frontal 

 region, is considered by Merriam as probably representing the female 

 of some form of the Ursus horribilis imperator group of the Rocky 

 Mountain region. So much confusion and uncertainty still exists as 

 to the relationship of female specimens to the several well-marked 

 species of grizzly occupying the Yellowstone Park section, and repre- 

 sented only by male specimens, that more material is required for 

 satisfactory determination of the females. These two skulls of 

 females, one not perfectly identifiable, were until recently the only 

 specimens known from Oregon of her once abundant and now almost 

 vanished largest carnivore. There are doubtless still old trophies in 

 skin rugs, or old skulls at ranches or homes of early settlers that 

 would throw much light on the original distribution of grizzlies in 

 Oregon if they could be made available for study. The tanned skin 

 upon Jardine's floor from which the previously mentioned skull was 

 taken, was of a dark-brown grizzly, with light-yellow tipping of the 

 long hairs, with long slightly curved claws, but the uncertainty of its 

 identification render these characters of little significance at present. 

 It was later presented to the agricultural college at Corvallis, Oreg., 

 and the skull is in the Biological Survey collection in the United 

 States National Museum. 



In 1915 the forest supervisor of the Imnaha National Forest re- 

 ported grizzly bears as scarce, and the same year in the Wallowa 

 Mountains the writer could get no recent records of occurrence. In 

 1919 G. G. Cantwell reported them from the Imnaha country on 

 hearsay, but could find no trace of their presence, and the same year 



