NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 145 



estimated number of grizzlies in Colorado at only 10 indi- 

 viduals. 



In recent decades grizzlies have become all but extinct in 

 New Mexico and Arizona and probably in the adjacent parts of 

 northern Mexico as well, where a century ago they were 

 common. A skull collected about 1852 near Coppermines 

 (now the site of Santa Rita, Grant County, N. Mex.) was 

 regarded by Baird (1857) as representing a smaller brown race, 

 which he named horriaeus, but Bailey (1931) says that speci- 

 mens collected in that region in later years are not identical 

 with it, so that an immigration of grizzlies into this area from 

 elsewhere is assumed. He quotes the journals of Pattie who 

 hunted in this region in 1824 and 1825 and wrote that it 

 "abounds with these fierce and terrible animals." Bailey 

 (1931) writes that in 1894 Dr. A. K. Fisher was told that 

 grizzly bears were then common in the mountains about 80 

 miles north of Silver City, N. Mex. In 1905 a large female was 

 killed in the Tularosa Mountains and a large male was said to 

 be still at large in that range. In 1908, there were said to be a 

 few still in the Mimbres, Mogollon, and San Francisco Ranges. 

 Since then the numbers seem to have decreased still further 

 for in 1939 the U. S. Biological Survey estimated that only 

 three grizzlies remained in New Mexico, so that the species 

 soon no doubt will no longer exist there. Much the same story 

 is probably true of Arizona, for which the same report fails to 

 include any bears at all. It may be doubted, too, if any remain 

 in the adjacent parts of Mexico, although Merriam lists speci- 

 mens in the National collection as follows: Arizona, 1856, 1913; 

 Chihuahua, 1899. A grizzly killed on Mount Taylor, northern 

 New Mexico, in 1916, may well be among the last from that 

 State. 



A century and more ago grizzly bears were common in Cali- 

 fornia and extended a short distance farther south into the 

 mountains of northern Lower California. From the latter 

 region, however, it must soon have been exterminated, for Dr. 

 E. W. Nelson (1921) states that the early account by Pattie 

 of his journey in these regions gives the only Lower Californian 

 record, namely, that there were grizzlies in the Sierra Juarez 

 near Santa Catarina Mission. In their work on the "Fur- 

 bearing Mammals of California," Grinnell, Dixon, and Lins- 

 dale (1937) have given a very full account of the grizzly bears 



