ally his diet is not carnivorous, but he will
eat at times either carrion or living flesh. We say living flesh, for
on capturing prey he does not wait to kill it, as most carnivorous
animals, but tears and destroys it while still screaming. He may be
said to swallow some of his food alive!

Of honey he is especially fond, and robs the bee-hive whenever it is
accessible to him. It is not safe from him even in the top of a tree,
provided the entrance to it is large enough to admit his body; and when
it is not, he often contrives to make it so by means of his sharp claws.
He has but little fear of the stings of the angry bees. His shaggy
coat and thick hide afford him ample protection against such puny
weapons. It is supposed that he spends a good deal of his time ranging
the forest in search of "bee trees."

Of course he is a tree-climber--climbs by the "hug," not by means of his
claws, as do animals of the cat kind; and in getting to the ground again
descends the trunk, stern-foremost, as a hod-carrier would come down a
ladder. In this he again differs from the _felidae_.

The range of the black bear is extensive--in fact it may be said to be
colimital with the forest, both in North and South America--though in
the latter division of the continent, another species of large black
bear exists, the _Ursus ornatas_. In the northern continent the
American bear is found in all the wooded parts from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, but not in the open and prairie districts. There the grizzly
holds dominion, though both of them range together in the wooded valleys
of the Rocky Mountains. The grizzly, on the other hand, is only met
with west of the Mississippi, and affects the dry desert countries of
the uninhabited West. The brown bear, supposed to be identical with the
_Ursus arctus_ of North Europe, is only met with in the wild and
treeless track known as "Barren grounds," which stretch across nearly
the whole northern part of the continent from the last timber to the
shores of the Arctic Sea, and in this region the black bear is not
found. The zone of the polar bear joins with that of the brown, and the
range of the former extends perhaps to the pole itself.

At the time of the colonisation of America, the area of the present
United States was the favourite home of the black bear. It was a
country entirely covered with thick forests, and of course a suitable
_habitat_ for him. Even to this day a considerable numbe