248 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



six to seven hundred pounds. The female never attains to 

 such size and weight. 



Once, in an overflow in the Arkansas bottom, I found 

 three cubs floating on a log, too small to have teeth large 

 enough to bite. I supposed they belonged to two mothers, 

 since I had never before found more than two following the 

 dam. 



The Black Bear is an omnivorous animal. When pressed 

 by hunger, it will eat anything that is edible. It hibernates 

 during a part of the winter; that is, if fat, it seeks caves or 

 hollow trees in which to lie — sometime in the month of 

 December, in southern latitudes, earlier in more northern — 

 until the warmth of spring makes it come out in quest of 

 food. During all this time, it lies almost dormant, sucking 

 its feet like the Opossum and Raccoon, as it were to exist off 

 its own fat. 



In the wide bottoms of the Mississippi River and its 

 many tributaries, the male Bear will hibernate under large 

 piles of cane, which, like a hog, it gathers in some dense 

 cane-brake, where it is not likely to be disturbed. 



When America was discovered, no animal of its kind 

 was more numerous than the Black Bear, from Canada to 

 the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the 

 great plains east of the Rocky Mountain Range. It fre- 

 quented all the mountains, the thickets of the vast plains, 

 and every creek, river, and bayou bottom. At the present 

 time, its habitat is confined to some portions of the various 

 ranges of mountains south of the St. Lawrence River, the 

 Great Lakes, and, east of the Mississippi River, to parts of 

 those portions of the MississiiDpi River and its tributaries 

 which are yet unsettled, and where it has been able to 

 escape destruction from hunters. Some few are yet found in 

 the dense thickets of the Colorado, Trinity, and Brazos 

 Rivers. 



Still-hunting was the mode of killing the Bear by the 

 early settlers of the American Colonies. Except in the 

 Alleghany and Blue Ridge Mountains, but few Bears would 

 now be killed by a still-hunter. In fact, they have become 



