Mr. Sclater, the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, writes me that the best naturalists only recognise three species of bears in North America, namely: the Grizzly (Ursus horribilis), the Black Bear (Ursus americanus), and the Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus). My correspondent adds that ‘a lot of varieties and sub-species have been made, but not upon any certain characters.’ Among these varieties and sub-species may, I suppose, be reckoned Ursus Richardsonii, the Alaskan grizzly, as well as a whole host of bears, best known to Western trappers as cinnamon bears, silver-tips, roach-backs, bald-faces, and range bears.
Luckily for me, the question of species is one for naturalists rather than for sportsmen to decide; the claim to rank as a distinct species appearing to rest rather upon a beast’s anatomy than upon his outward appearance and manner of life.
Dead grizzly
Having studied bears with some care and under favourable circumstances in more than one portion of the globe, I incline to the belief that the different species cross almost as freely as do different breeds of dogs; and certainly it seems probable that upon the North American continent all the different varieties owe their origin to the grizzly or the black, or to a union between the two. In this view I am supported by such a practical field naturalist and sportsman as Dr. Rainsford, as well as by a number of the best hunters and trappers whom I have met, and by certain very significant facts. Dr. Rainsford alludes to the first of these facts in his admirable article upon the Grizzly Bear in ‘The Big Game of North America.’ He says: ‘I myself have shot three young bears going with one sow, one almost yellow, one almost black, and another nearly grey. I have seen ordinary black bears, with year-old grizzly cubs, shaped differently from the mother, unmistakably owing both their shape and colour to the parentage of the male grizzly.’ This is the evidence of Dr. Rainsford, and I have heard similar statements as to the occurrence of different coloured cubs in the same litter, not once but a score of times, from Indians and white men who had passed their lives in the mountains; and I have round me in my house at the present moment a number of skins of bears killed by myself, which, if colour be any criterion as to species, represent almost as many species as there are skins.
But if anyone wishes to judge of the futility of trying to ‘place’ a bear by his colour, he should visit the drying-yard of our principal merchant in furs, here in Victoria. In that yard on a sunny day, when the bear skins are laid out to air, he will see skins of every shade between black, white, and red, all collected from a comparatively limited district, and all shading so gradually into one another, that you cannot yourself decide where the smoky grey of the true grizzly has changed into the reddish brown of the cinnamon, or where that has become dark enough to be considered a rather brownish black.
As it is with the colour so it is with the shape of the beasts, and with the shape and colour of their claws. The typical grizzly should be higher at the shoulder, somewhat shorter in the back, and generally more massive than the black bear. He should be so high at the shoulder as to appear almost humpbacked, whilst his head should be heavy and massive, broad between the ears, short in proportion to its size as compared to the head of the black bear, sharp at the snout, and somewhat flat behind the eyes; the whole expression of the head being as unmistakably pugnacious and dangerous as the expression of the long shallow head of the black bear is weak and inoffensive. As most people are aware, naturalists rely for purposes of identification more upon the shape of a bear’s skull than upon any external characteristics, and for that reason I have inserted here an engraving from a photograph of two skulls placed side by side, the larger one being that of a medium-sized grizzly bitch (or sow) from Alaska, the other that of a very large black bear (male) from British Columbia.
Black bear, Grizzly bear
As far as the general expression of the beast goes, it seems to me that that is no better guide than his colour, for even amongst grizzlies I have in one trip come across one specimen with a head as full of vice as a viper’s, and another as mild as a Chinese cook’s. It is true that the sexes differed; the mild face naturally belonging to the lady.