AMERICAN BEARS 



23 



nature as to be particularly valueless. No attempt will 

 be made here to list the many North American bears 

 that have been described by our naturalists, as this 

 would carry us far beyond our space limits. However, 

 one writer on the subject claims to find no fewer than 

 forty or more different kinds of bears a statement that 

 saner naturalists take with a very large pinch of salt. 

 No bear in all the world is more interesting in its 

 habits than the Polar or White bear of the Arctic 

 regions, also widely known as the Ice bear. This species 

 has an individuali- 

 ty that no other 

 representative o f 

 the bear family 

 possesses ; and its 

 history, as it has 

 been recorded by 

 man, extends back 

 over more than a 

 century. So dis- 

 tinctive are the 

 characters of this 

 great, white, hairy- 

 footed, black-nosed 

 bear, that apparent- 

 ly no zoologist has 

 ever made any at- 

 tempt to record 

 more than the one 

 species of the ani- 

 mal every writer 

 on the subject con- 

 sidering the ice 

 bears of the north, 

 on the two Hemis- 

 pheres, to be iden- 

 tical. In North 

 America they have 

 been reported as 

 far south as north- 

 ern Labrador ; 

 while in the realms 

 of its ice bound 

 home it ranges 

 everywhere. This 

 is not at all sur- 

 prising, as this 

 bear, with its love 

 of roaming and great, fur-padded feet, can move over 

 the most slippery ice almost anywhere and that at a 

 very good speed. Moreover, it is as fine a swimmer as 

 a seal, and behaves, in the ice-cold seas of the north, 

 with as much unconcern as though it had been born 

 in that element. It has been known to drift for miles 

 upon a floating iceberg, and this evidently for pleasure 

 and convenience, rather than from necessity, as a num- 

 ber of Arctic explorers have reported having seen Polar 

 bears, hale and hearty, swimming in the open ocean 

 all the way from forty to eighty miles from any land 



THE POLAR OR WHITE BEAR 



Figure 2. This group of Polar Bears represents a female with her two young; the 'atter are about 

 to feast upon a dead harbor seal, captured for them by their mother. These bears are so clever 

 that when hunting seals they conceal the black tips of their noses, the only part of them 

 that is not snow white. This is a group in the United States National Museum, photographed 

 by the Author. 



or other landing-place. As for the size of a big male of 

 this species, this is, even at the most recent time, a matter 

 of dispute by observers, and the total length of various 

 specimens has been given all the way from seven feet 

 to thirteen, with weights to correspond. It is not at 

 all unusual to find these immense bears in menageries 

 and zoological gardens, both in this country and abroad; 

 hunters in the Arctic regions have often captured the 

 cubs after killing the old she-bear, and these invariably 

 command a good price, selling readily to dealers in wild 



animals. In con- 

 finement the Polar 

 bears will feed on 

 many kinds of 

 vegetables and 

 fruit, and they 

 have been known 

 to thrive on wheat 

 bread alone. Where 

 they are more or 

 less numerous, Arc- 

 tic explorers have 

 found them to be 

 a downright nui- 

 sance, as they steal 

 provisions how- 

 ever carefully con- 

 cealed. Normally, 

 though, this bear is 

 a typical flesh-eat- 

 er, and prefers 

 seals, fish, and oth- 

 er kinds of flesh 

 above everything 

 else, when chance 

 throws it in his 

 way. The meat of 

 the ice bear does 

 not agree with man, 

 as a rule, though 

 dogs will thrive on 

 it well, and in that 

 way it has often 

 been a boon to the 

 explorer in the 

 Polar regions. 



A writer says in 

 Animal Life that 

 "when the first discoverers went to the Arctic Seas, 

 dressed in thick clothes and skins, the Polar bears took 

 them for seal. On Bear Island, below Spitzbergen, a 

 Dutch sailor sat down on the snow to rest. A bear 

 walked up behind him, and seized and crushed his head, 

 evidently not in the least aware what kind of animal it 

 had got hold of." That is a pretty good story; but we 

 must believe that Bruin, on that occasion, knew pretty 

 well that he had not tackled either a seal or a walrus 

 much less a fish or a clutch of gull's eggs. In hunting 

 the seal the Polar bear is at his best, and he commands 



