204 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



and Mexico on the north and south, occasionally breed 

 together. This, of course, will account for all varieties of 

 color. I myself -have shot three young Bears going with 

 one sow, one almost yellow, one almost black, and another 

 nearly gray. I have seen ordinary Black Bears (Ursus 

 Americanus) with year-old Grizzly cubs shaped differently 

 from the mother, unmistakably owing both their shape and 

 color to the parentage of the male Grizzly. As to shape, 

 too, there is the greatest difference in specimens. Some 

 Grizzlies have a formidable hump-like lift back of the head,, 

 extending to well over the shoulders. This gives a Bear 

 what they call in the West a very hard expression, and an 

 ugly customer he looks as you would care to meet. Again, 

 in some this hump is scarcely noticeable, and the back is 

 almost as straight as in a Black Bear. So in paws. While 

 all Grizzlies are wider in the heel than the Black Bear, there 

 is a noticeable difference in the tread. Some are much 

 broader across the heel than others, the foot squarer. I 

 once killed two well-grown two-year-old Grizzlies together, 

 who had double instead of single tusks, in both upper and 

 lower jaws. This, I fancy, is rare; for my guide, who has 

 killed over one hundred Grizzlies, has never seen but one 

 like specimen. 



I have pretty weir satisfied myself, then, that there are 

 only two distinct species of Bears at present to be found 

 within the geographical limits I have indicated — the Black 

 and the Grizzly; and these, perhaps, being driven together 

 by the pressure of civilization, are likely to undergo con- 

 siderable modifications, if they survive during the next 

 twenty-five years. 



The range of the Grizzly has, of course, as in the case of 

 all other large wild animals, been of late years greatly 

 restricted. When I made my first hunting expedition to 

 the West, in 1868, it was not uncommon to find specimens, 

 on the plains, at a distance of many hundred miles east of 

 the mountains. In 1881, when I made my second trip, the 

 Big Horn Range, and the lesser ranges running out as spurs, 

 to the east of it, were full of Bears. Now, so far as I can 



