OF WILD ANIMALS 291 



ing methods of the human assassin who shoots in the dark 

 and runs away. 



I do not count the bear as a common criminal, even though 

 at rare intervals he kills a cage-mate smaller and weaker than 

 himself. One killing of that kind, done by Cinnamon Jim to 

 a small black bear that had annoyed him beyond all endurance, 

 was inflicted as a legitimate punishment, and was so recorded. 

 The attack of two large bears, a Syrian and a sloth bear, 

 upon a small Japanese black bear, in which the big pair 

 deliberately attempted to disembowel the small victim, biting 

 him only in the abdomen, always has been a puzzle to me. 

 I cannot fathom the idea which possessed those two ursine 

 minds; but I have no doubt that some of the book-making 

 men who read the minds of wild animals as if they were open 

 books could tell me all about it. 



On the ice-pack in front of his stone hut at the north end 

 of the Franz Josef Archipelago Nansen saw an occurrence that 

 was plain murder. A large male polar bear feeding upon a 

 dead walrus was approached across the ice-pack by two polar- 

 bear cubs. The gorging male immediately stopped feeding 

 and rushed toward the small intruders. They turned and 

 fled wildly; but the villain pursued them, far out upon the 

 ice. He overtook them, killed both, and then serenely re- 

 turned to his solitary feast. 



In February, 1907, a tragedy occurred in the Zoological 

 Park which was a close parallel of the Lopez murder. It was 

 a case in which my only crumb of satisfaction was in my ability 

 to say, "I told you so," than which no consolation can be 

 more barren. 



For seven years there had lived together in the great 

 polar bears' den of the Zoological Park two full-grown, very 

 large and fine polar bears. They came from William Hagen- 

 beck's great group, and both were males. Their rough-and- 

 tumble wrestling, both in the swimming pool and out of it, 

 was a sight of almost perennial interest; and while their biting 



