Polar Bear 
lengthened and tapering, forming the most characteristic 
feature of the animal. Fur thick and long. Colour, dark- 
brown, sometimes with rufous tints, generally tipped with 
white or gray, nose and region around the eyes white. 
Tail usually faintly ringed with grayish-white, sometimes 
only perceptible on the basal portion below, or occasionally 
with rings entirely lacking. 
Range. Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande into Southern Texas. 
This curious beast, reminding one of a coon with nose and 
tail pulled out to a point, is a characteristically tropical animal, 
which ranges just over our southwestern border. 
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BEARS 
Family Ursid@e 
Polar Bear 
Thalarctos maritimus (Phipps) 
Length. 7 feet. 
Description. Entirely white at all seasons, or slightly tinged 
with yellowish; fleshy parts of nose and lips black. 
Range. Circumpolar regions South to Northern Labrador. 
The Polar Bear is the beach ranger of the northern seas. 
Other bears the world over keep to the shady thickets and 
forest tangles, where, when the hunting is poor, they can 
gather wild berries and nuts, and grub roots out of the black 
earth. But the polar bear rarely tastes vegetable food except in 
the few short weeks of an Arctic summer. In the desolate, 
treeless north, he shuffles along over ice-crusted ridges, powdered 
with snow. His favourite hunting grounds are along the margin 
of the ice-fields, where the drifting floes grind against the fixed 
ice of the shore line, and rend and split with the heaving of 
the ocean. Here he watches for seals at their breathing holes, 
as patiently as a cat watches for mice, or stalks them under 
cover of the ice cakes at the edge of the breakers. 
lf he sees one resting on the ice where there is small 
chance of creeping on it undetected, he plunges into the sea 
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