-- 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: ‘ Imyself have shot three young bears going 
with one sow, one almost yellow, one almost black, and another 
nearly grey. I have seen ordinary black bears, with year-old 
grizzly cubs, shaped differently from the mother, unmistakably 
owing both their shape and colour to the parentage of the male 
gtizzly.’ 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 
_ na 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 
head of the black bear, sharp at the snout, and somewhat 
l. AA 
