little room for difference of opinion ; if inadequate, 

 many important points must remain in doubt. 

 It is not the business of the naturalist either 

 to create or to suppress species, but to endeavor 

 to ascertain how many Nature has established, 

 and having discovered this, to point out their 

 characters and learn as much as possible about 

 them. 



"One of the unlooked-for results of the critical 

 study of the American bears is the discovery that 

 the big bears, like mice and other small mammals, 

 split up into a large number of forms whose ranges 

 in some cases overlap so that three or more species 

 may be found in the same region. 



"Another surprising result is the discovery that 

 Admiralty Island in Southwestern Alaska appears 

 to be inhabited by no less than five distinct species, 

 each of which is obviously related to and repre- 

 sentative of an adjacent mainland species. . . . 



"In most species of bears the males are much 



larger than the females. In some the disparity in 



size is very remarkable, as in middendorffi, of Ko- 



diak Island and magister of southern California. In 



260 



