192 The Grizzly Bear 



it remains to-day just as Lewis and Clark found it a cen- 

 tury ago. I have never taken the pains to acquire from 

 other authorities any special information about the color 

 of the grizzly bears — chiefly for the reason that I have 

 myself seen a suflicient number of skins, and also living 

 bears, ranging all the way from Chihuahua, Mexico, to 

 White Horse, Yukon Territory. I have seen, all told, at 

 least two hundred skins of grizzlies, and not far from forty 

 living bears. Having seen these variations for myself, I 

 have never taken the pains to collect data from books, 

 but have learned much from practical, bona-fide bear 

 hunters like yourself. So far as I can judge, the color of 

 the grizzly conforms with no known law of coloration. I 

 do not know of any other bear species in which the colora- 

 tion of the pelage is so erratic as it is in that of the Rocky 

 Mountain grizzly. At this moment we have* a female 

 grizzly from Colorado which is very dark, and so nearly 

 destitute of the usual light color on her hair tips that she 

 is at times not easily distinguished from the Alaskan brown 

 bears— the latter being wholly without grizzled hair tips. 

 With this bear is exhibited a medium light-colored grizzly 

 from Wyoming, which, to judge by color alone, might well 

 be called another species. It is the kind frequently spoken 

 of as the bald-face grizzly — the hair of its entire head being 

 of a light buff color. 



"I have seen grizzly bear skins from El Paso, Texas, 

 said to have come from old Mexico, that were almost a 

 golden yellow. Our grizzly bear from White Horse, 

 Yukon Territory, is about the same color as the so-called 

 bald-face from Wyoming. The hair of some grizzlies is 



* In the Zoological Park, New York, of which Dr. Hornaday is Director. 



