i 7 * CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



Both in the United States and British Columbia, the 

 grizzly bears of to-day are not extremely large. I think 

 the bears that do mature are killed by hunters before 

 they have lived the seven years that are necessary to the 

 production of specimens of the largest size. To-day, 

 any grizzly that will weigh seven hundred and fifty 

 pounds may fairly be called a very large one. Those 

 which will weigh a thousand pounds are now as rare as 

 white buffaloes. I never have seen, and never expect to 

 see, a one-thousand-pound grizzly. The largest indi- 

 vidual that I ever knew to be weighed was one that died 

 in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and which was found, by 

 Mr. G. O. Shields, to weigh eleven hundred and fifty- 

 three pounds. By old hunters it was " estimated " at 

 eighteen hundred pounds. So far as I can learn, the 

 Rocky Mountains have not produced during the past ten 

 years a wild grizzly actually weighing, on scales, over 

 seven hundred and fifty pounds. The great majority of 

 the largest specimens killed and weighed during the last 

 twenty years have weighed between five hundred and six 

 hundred pounds ; but records of actual weights, on scales, 

 are very, very rare. 



In the Zoological Park at New York, we have had 

 grizzly bears coming from Chihuahua, Mexico, from 

 Colorado, Wyoming and White Horse, Yukon Terri- 

 tory. Between all these there can be discerned no ex- 

 ternal differences. I believe they all belong to the same 

 species, straight Ursus horribilis. Just where the griz- 

 zlies of the far north are met by the Alaskan brown 

 bears, no one is as yet able to say. Mr. J. W. Tyrrell 



