American Big Game in its Haunts 



timus, the white or polar bear, which most of us 

 grew up to regard as the very incarnation of tena- 

 cious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the 

 recitals of late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a 

 single shot, and does not seem to afford much bet- 

 ter sport than so much rabbit shooting. The others 

 are the great Kadiak bear (U. middendorfi) ; the 

 grizzly (U. horribilis) , and the black or true 

 American bear (U. am eric anus} . The extent to 

 which the last three may be subdivided remains 

 uncertain, but the barren-ground bear ( U. richard- 

 soni) is surely a valid species of the grizzly type. 

 The grizzlies and the big Alaska bears approach 

 more nearly than americanus to the widespread 

 brown bear (U. arctos} of Europe and Asia, and 

 the hypothesis is reasonable that they originated 

 from that form or its immediate ancestors, in 

 which case we have the interesting series of 

 parallel modifications exhibited in the two conti- 

 nents, for the large bear of Kamtschatka ap- 

 proaches very nearly to those of Alaska, while 

 further to the south in America, where the condi- 

 tions of life more nearly resemble those surrounding 

 arctos, these bears have in the grizzlies retained 

 more of their original form. Whether or not the 

 large Pleistocene cave bear (U. speltzus) was a 

 lineal ancestor is questionable, for in its later 



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