122 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
size and general form, offers perhaps the nearest approxi- 
mation to the present species. But his enormous mag- 
nitude, which may be stated as averaging twice the bulk 
of the Black Bear; the greatly increased size and power 
of his canine teeth; and, above all, the excessive length 
of his talons, on the fore feet especially, afford charac- 
teristic differences so obvious and so essential, that it is 
difficult to conceive how they could have been so long 
overlooked by naturalists as well as travellers, who have 
all, until within little more than twenty years of the 
present time, passed him over without even a casual 
hint that he presented any claims to be considered as 
distinct from the common species of his country. 
His hair, generally speaking, is longer, finer, and more 
abundant than that of the Black Bear, and varies in 
colour to an almost indefinite extent, passing through 
all the intermediate shades between a light gray and a 
black brown. The brown tinge is, however, the most 
common; and it is always more or less grizzled either 
by the intermixture of grayish hairs, or by the brown 
hairs being tipped with gray. ‘The hair of the legs and 
feet is darker and coarser, and diminishes in length as it 
descends; on the muzzle it becomes remarkably pale, 
and is so much shortened as to give to the animal an 
appearance of baldness. His eyes are very small and 
hardly at all prominent; and the line of the profile is 
consequently nearly straight. His tail is scarcely visible, 
being almost entirely concealed by the long hairs which 
surround it. Of the great size of his feet and talons, 
some judgment may be formed from the measurements 
given by Captains Lewis and Clarke, the first travellers 
by whom the Grizzly Bear was accurately described. 
