CatJiping and Hunting^ in the Shoshone 



lieve that almost all the bears ranging in the 

 Rocky Mountains occasionally breed to- 

 gether ; certainly brown and black some- 

 times do. Our party once shot a black 

 bear with a large brown cross extending 

 from the tail to the back of the head and 

 down each shoulder. Just as certainly 

 the brown and grizzly on occasions inter- 

 marry. My hunter assures me he has shot 

 gray cubs with a brown sow. I may be 

 wrong ; but I cannot myself see any differ- 

 ence sufficiently marked to warrant the 

 idea that the cinnamon bear of the Rockies 

 is not the coarser, larger brown bear, the 

 result of some crossing between the grizzly 

 and the brown. 



Then, some men insist that among the 

 gray bears there are no less than three dis- 

 tinct varieties, — silvertip, roachback, and 

 grizzly. As I have said before, I cannot 

 say anything about the California grizzly, 

 though I do not think, from skins I have 

 examined, he differs materially from his 

 neighbor of the mountains ; but as to these 

 differences of color indicating a distinct 

 variety, I cannot believe it. We shot 

 three bears, feeding on one carcass, last 

 fall, all three years old, and evidently of 

 the same litter, and you could scarcely find 

 greater varieties of color than those they 



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