SOUTH AMERICA 399 



Quite different is the type of country inhabited by these 

 bears in southwestern Ecuador, where Tate (1931) found them, 

 and farther northeast in the Paramo de Tama near the Colom- 

 bia-Venezuela boundary, where, writes Osgood (1912, p. 58), 

 they are very seldom seen and are decidedly rare. In four 

 weeks' hunting he found only a fragment of dung and no tracks; 

 "natives say the bears live almost exclusively in the forest and 

 it is only on the very rare occasions when they wander out into 

 the cultivated clearings that they have been killed." Tate, in 

 company with a native hunter, found traces of an adult pair in 

 the rain forest on a large plateau in southwestern Ecuador, on 

 the Andean slope at about 4,000 feet altitude. He followed 

 the tracks a long distance up the slopes, and came upon six 

 places where the bears had "bedded down." He saw also 

 where they had broken down many trees 2 inches in diameter 

 and "were feeding on the seeds of a palm called "pambili" 

 trees from 80 to 100 feet high. They evidently climbed the 

 trees and brought down the whole fruit-stalk, which looks 

 somewhat like that of the royal palm. Numbers of the trees 

 had been climbed, some of them several times, since they had 

 both old and fresh claw marksX Other food was secured by 

 breaking down young palms, tearing open the green stalk and 

 eating the unopened leaves in the interior. According to 

 Olalla [a skilled collector], in the region about Quijos in eastern 

 Ecuador bears appear at a certain season of the year upon the 

 mountain sides to feed upon the ripe fruit of a certain tree," 

 but the statement that they make large nests of sticks in the 

 tree tops for sleeping purposes, as Olalla told him, seems open 

 to question. 



Nearly a century ago Tschudi (1844) gathered together many 

 notes on this bear in Peru, from which the following are culled. 

 He transcribes a few interesting points from the accounts of 

 the early Spanish explorers. Thus Ulloa said that the bear was 

 common in the provinces of Guijos, Macas, and Jaen de Braca- 

 moros. It was sometimes lassoed from horseback. It was 

 also found in the forests east of La Paz, Bolivia. According 

 to the account of Garcilasso de la Vega, it was rare in Peru, a 

 fact that he attributed to the method of hunting. Great 

 annual drives were held in which the Incas used as many as 

 25,000-30,000 Indians, whose lines would cover 20 to 25 

 leagues, converging toward a funnel into which the game of the 



