Bear Traits 



Bears are recognized as the shyest and wariest of big 

 animals, but most of the stories told about them have to 

 do more with the emotions of the hunter, or with the 

 game's ferocity when wounded, than with the manner of 

 life of the bear. The increasing scarcity and increas- 

 ing shyness of these animals renders the study of their 

 habits each year more difficult, and it is high time that 

 observations such as here set down should be recorded. 



A BERRY PICKER 



It was on a little river flowing into the head 

 of a British Columbia inlet that I saw my first 

 bear a black one. We had laboriously poled 

 our canoe for a mile or two up the rushing 

 river, and had landed on a gravel bar to sur- 

 vey the mountain sides for white goats, when 

 around a point a little below us on the other 

 side of the stream walked a moderate sized 

 bear. It was August, and the ripe salmon 

 berries hung thick on bushes which grew in 

 the edge of the forest on the cut bank beneath 



223 



