HUNTING THE GRIZZLY BEAR. 260 



t 



Sykes, after the lapse of two years, and the apparent 

 joy with which it welcomed him, though he gave it no- 

 thing, are interesting traits in the animal economy. Yet 

 this same hyaena has, "time out of mind," been the 

 " ferocious and untameable " the very ultimate exam- 

 ple of unrelenting cruelty . 



Some of the habits of the bears and the hyaena are 

 similar : for instance, they both consume dead carcasses ; 

 but otherwise, the hyaena is by much the more carnivo- 

 rous animal of the two, especially in the structure of its 

 teeth,- and therefore the accounts of the untameable dis- 

 position of the one animal are no more deserving of ra- 

 tional credence, than those of the other. 



We have no intentions of pleading specially for the 

 grizzly bear, or for any animal whatever ; but, though it 

 is nearly exploded among all who study natural history, 

 there is a great deal of the ridiculous exaggeration intro- 

 duced by the showmen, still current in the country, and 

 in so far perpetuated by compilers ; and this remaining 

 delusion, it becomes our duty, writing as we do for the 

 public, by every means in our power to dispel. It is 

 also our duty to mention, for the sake of those who have 

 not the opportunity of seeing animals in a state of na 

 ture, or in that semi-freedom which they enjoy in zoolo- 

 gical gardens, that, in the pigeon-holes of a traveling 

 caravan, they see only the dwarfed or emaciated forms 

 of the animals, and nothing whatever of their natural 

 dispositions. Indeed, if the gentlest mouthpiece of the 

 menagerie that ever told the terrors of a tiger to the 

 wondering rustics at a fair, were to get only twelve 

 months of the tenement and treatment of his beast, he 



