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 



