CHAPTER XVII 



THE BLACK BEAR 



The bear is the largest of all the fur bearing animals of North 

 America, and with the exception of the larger members of the cat 

 family, no creatures have longer held a place in human interest than 

 the bears. Their size and formidable equipment of teeth and claws 

 give a touch of fear which goes with admiration. 



"The American black bear has without doubt the widest dis- 

 tribution of any North American bear, being found from Mexico 

 up to the Arctic Circle. The Grizzly Bear is found in a large part 

 of the territory in which the black bear lives although the habits of 

 these two creatures are different. Another group is the brown bear, 

 the largest of all the bears, and these inhabit the territory between the 

 Northern border of the United States and the Arctic Circle. The 

 Polar Bear is found in the everlasting ice fields of the polar regions. 

 This species is different from all of the other bears in its color, as 

 well as greater length of body. The inland white bear is principally 

 found in Southwestern British Columbia and according to some 

 authorities, belongs to the black bear group. 



The Polar Bear stays well inside of the Arctic Circle; the big 

 brown Alaska bears are only found in certain localities on or near 

 the Northwest coast of the Continent; the Grizzly bears inhabit the 

 mountainous regions in the extreme west from Alaska south. The 

 black bear is found in the central and northern parts of the United 

 States and in the central and southern parts of Canada from the 

 Atlantic Coast to the shores of the Pacific, and his half brothers 

 and first cousins are found in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico 

 and are so much alike that it takes a specialist and sometimes a 

 post mortem examination to tell them apart. 



A mistaken idea, that is very old, and very generally enter- 

 tained about these animals, is that there is a difference in 

 species between the black and brown or cinnamon colored in- 

 dividuals of the tribe. This idea is so wide spread that one 

 often hears it said that there are three varieties of bears in the 

 United States — the black bear, the cinnamon bear, and the grizzly 

 bear. This is not correct. There are many cinnamon colored bears 



