er bear, watching the stream

URSUS, THE DROLL

INTRODUCTORY

With the possible exception of the deer family, the bear is the most
widely disseminated big game, known to hunters.

He makes his home within the Arctic Circle, often living upon the great
ice-floe, or dwells within a tropical jungle, and both climates are
agreeable to him, while longitudinally he has girdled the world.

Of course bruin varies much, according to the climate in which he
lives, and the conditions of his life, but all the way from the poles
to the tropics he retains certain characteristics that always proclaim
him a bear.

He is a plantigrade, walking like a man upon the soles of his feet.
There is more truth than poetry in Kipling's poem, "The Man Who Walks
Like a Bear," for some men do walk like a bear.

Bruin's four-footed gait is a shuffle and a shamble, rather clumsy and
ludicrous, but it takes him over the ground at a surprising pace.
Queer, also, is the fact that the bear combines great dexterity with
his seeming clumsiness, as many a hunter has found to his cost. His
tree-climbing accomplishments are likewise remarkable, when we consider
his great size and weight. The grizzlies, and some other large
varieties, do not do tree-climbing, except when they are young. A
grizzly cub can climb a tree, but his wrists soon become too stiff to
permit of their bending about the trunk.

Bruin's disposition also varies with the climate he inhabits. This in
turn is because his diet varies in differing latitudes. The farther
south he ranges, the more of a vegetarian he becomes. Consequently, he
is not so ferocious. The great white polar bear is largely
carnivorous, so he is a creature not to be trifled with; while on the
other hand, the little African sun bear is a rollicking, social,
good-natured little chap, weighing many times less than his fierce
cousin.

Formerly, it has been supposed that the Numidian lion and the Bengal
tiger were the largest carnivorous animals in existence, but more
recent discoveries show that our Alaskan brown bear, found upon the
peninsulas of lower Alaska and Kodiak Island, is easily the master of
either, in size or strength. Some of the splendid skins taken from
these, the largest of all the bears, measure fourteen feet in length.
Alaska also gives us the smallest North American bear, the glacial bear.

Californians are wont to tell us that the only true grizzly is that
found upon the cover of t