BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 373 



are collies. It does not require a big dog or a powerful dog 

 for the work, for no dog is big enough to close with, whilst any 

 dog is big enough to frighten, a black bear. I remember upon 

 one occasion seeing three dogs, two small Pomeranians and 

 a cross-bred setter, run a two-year-old black bear to bay on the 

 ford of a river. The dogs had to swim, but by standing up 

 the bear could rest upon firm ground, and keep his arms and 

 jaws free for fighting above water. 



The bear had already received a shot in the stomach be- 

 fore the dogs tackled him, but when they ran him to bay he 

 seemed strong and well. Neither dogs nor bear took any 

 notice of me, though I was standing up to my knees in the 

 water of the ford within a few paces of them ; and in five 

 minutes the fight was over without interference on my part- 

 At first the bear cuffed the dogs as they swam up to him, as a 

 man might cuff who knew nothing of hitting out from the 

 shoulder, and once he took the big dog in his jaws and went 

 right under with him. However, the setter came up smiling, 

 and shortly afterwards poor old Bruin was floating down stream, 

 his head under water, and the dogs tugging with impunity at 

 his flanks. I suppose that this bear weighed less than 200 Ibs. 



Captain Baldwin in his excellent book on the game of 

 Bengal describes two kinds of bears : U. labiatus and U. tibet- 

 anus ; and almost everything that he says of the Indian black 

 bear would apply equally well to U. americanus (even to his 

 weakness for yellow raspberries), except that U. labiatus appears 

 to fight upon occasion, whereas U. americanus is hardly ever 

 known to fight even in self-defence, and has never, as far as I 

 know, been accused of making an unprovoked assault upon a 

 human being. 



Baldwin seems to have been somewhat surprised when he dis- 

 covered that the Indian black bear fed upon carrion. No one in 

 America would be surprised at anything which U. americanus 

 considered good for him. I have seen a cub take rotten melon, 

 a piece of meat, a cake of chocolate, a plug of T. & B. tobacco, 

 and the end of a half-smoked cigar for breakfast. Being 



