BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 353 



such a practical field naturalist and sportsman as Dr. Rains - 

 ford, as well as by a number of the best hunters and trappers 

 whom I have met, and by certain very significant facts. Dr. 

 Rainsford alludes to the first of these facts in his admirable 

 article upon the Grizzly Bear in 'The Big Game of North 

 America.' He says : ' I myself have shot three young bears going 

 with one sow, one almost yellow, one almost black, and another 

 nearly grey. I have seen ordinary black be^rs, with year-old 

 grizzly cubs, shaped differently from the mother, unmistakably 

 owing both their shape and colour to the parentage of the male 

 grizzly.' This is the evidence of Dr. Rainsford, and I have 

 heard similar statements as to the occurrence of different 

 coloured cubs in the same litter, not once but a score of times, 

 from Indians and white men who had passed their lives in the 

 mountains ; and I have round me in my house at the present 

 moment a number of skins of bears killed by myself, which, if 

 colour be any criterion as to species, represent almost as many 

 species as there are skins. 



But if anyone wishes to judge of the futility of trying to 

 ' place ' a bear by his colour, he should visit the drying-yard of 

 our principal merchant in furs, here in Victoria. In that yard 

 on a sunny day, when the bear skins are laid out to air, he will 

 see skins of every shade between black, white, and red, all 

 collected from a comparatively limited district, and all shading 

 so gradually into one another, that you cannot yourself decide 

 where the smoky grey of the true grizzly has changed into the 

 reddish brown of the cinnamon, or where that has become 

 dark enough to be considered a rather brownish black. 



As it is with the colour so it is with the shape of the beasts, 

 and with the shape and colour of their claws. The typical 

 grizzly should be higher at the shoulder, somewhat shorter in 

 the back, and generally more massive than the black bear. He 

 should be so high at the shoulder as to appear almost hump- 

 backed, whilst his head should be heavy and massive, broad 

 between the ears, short in proportion to its size as compared to 

 the head of the black bear, sharp at the snout, and somewhat 



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