THE SLOTH BEAR 83 



and, holding this as a shield against the angry bear, may plunge a 

 long, broad knife into his heart as he snaps at the bark. In these 

 modes of attack accidents do, indeed, often happen; but in the 

 course of time some hunters become so expert and cold-blooded 

 that they prefer the spear or knife to any other weapon. Indeed, 

 a peasant girl in the village of Morschowa is famous all over West 

 Siberia for having killed more than thirty bears with the knife.'' 



In the Rocky Mountains of North America, extending some 

 thousands of miles from Alaska to Mexico, lives the Grizzly, the 

 fiercest and most dreaded of all the bear family. He is closely 

 related to the brown bear of Europe. With the exception, perhaps, 

 of the jaguar, there is no animal in the Western World which 

 hunters are so cautious in attacking as this huge unwieldy animal, 

 with its enormous strength, and its terrible equipment of tooth and 

 claw. 



The grizzly is considerably larger than the brown bear, measur- 

 ing as much as nine feet in length, and weighing from 800 to 1000 

 lbs. Some years ago, before the Western territories of the United 

 States were occupied by settlers, a species of grizzly, weighing when 

 full-grown from looo to 1800 lbs., existed in the Sierra Nevada 

 range. They proved, however, so destructive to the flocks and 

 herds of the early settlers that the shepherds were forced to 

 destroy them by poison, and few or none of these giants of the 

 bear family now exist. The smaller grizzlies are still to be found 

 in the more out-of-the-way districts, but even they are gradually 

 disappearing. 



THE SLOTH BEAR 



The Sloth Bear differs widely from the other members of the 

 bear family. It has short hind-legs, a very thick furry coat, and 

 its snout and lower lip are unusually long. Altogether, it is 

 certainly the ugliest and most ungainly of the bear tribe. 



The curious shape of its snout and lower lip is evidently adapted 

 to the sloth bear's manner of picking up a living. It exists almost 



