146 EXTINCT >AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



in that State. Dr. Merriam from a study of available skulls 

 believes that seven specific types are represented amqng them. 

 In the coastal counties, Humboldt and Mendocino, grizzlies 

 were commoner in the river valleys where settlements were 

 first made, so that on account of their depredations upon 

 stock and the threat to the lives of children and others passing 

 along roads, they were soon exterminated, within a short time 

 after the first settlers arrived, about 1850. According to one 

 informant the last grizzly taken in Humboldt County was 

 killed in the Mattole section in 1868. The same person tells 

 that his father in the early days had once counted 40 bears in 

 sight at one time from a high point in the Mattole section 

 that afforded a wide outlook over open country. In Mendocino 

 County the authors quoted found on inquiry among old resi- 

 dents that the last grizzlies there were killed in the fall of 1875, 

 when an old female, a yearling, and a large male were shot. 

 Various fragments concerning the killing of these bears or 

 incidents of narrow escapes from them are brought together 

 in the work mentioned, from which one may gather an impres- 

 sion of the abundance of grizzlies in the third quarter of the 

 last century, their boldness and occasional depredations, as 

 well as the continual warfare waged against them by the 

 settlers. As a result of constant hunting, bears became 

 scarcer by the beginning of the last quarter of the century, 

 but they still persisted in some localities. In the nineties there 

 were still grizzlies "in the near ranges of the San Gabriel 

 Mountains due north of Pasadena," even as late as 1897. 

 "In the heavily chaparral-covered Santa Ana (or Trabuco) 

 Mountains of Orange and extreme northwestern San Diego 

 counties" they persisted "until well along in the 1900's," and 

 the latest record of one being killed there is given as January 5, 

 1908. One of the last grizzlies killed in the Yosemite region 

 was in 1887. "The last known southern California grizzly" 

 was killed October 28, 1916, near Sunland, Los Angeles County, 

 while so far as the writers above quoted are able to ascertain, 

 the last certain record of a grizzly killed in California was of 

 one shot in Tulare County in August, 1922. A few later 

 reports were un verifiable. 



In the State of Oregon these bears are perhaps already gone. 

 Bailey (1936) has brought together many notes on their earlier 

 abundance and gradual diminution. In the days of muzzle- 



