American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ bear of Europe extends into North Africa as far as the Atlas Mountains.

      The family Procyonidae contains the existing species which appear to be nearest of kin to bears. These are all small and consist of the well-known raccoon, the coatis, the ring-tailed bassaris and the kinkajou, all differing from bears in varying details of tooth and other structures. The curious little panda (Aelurus fulgens) from the Himalayas, is very suggestive of raccoons, and as forms belonging to this genus inhabited England in Pliocene times, it is possible that we have pointed out to us here the origin of this, at present, strictly American family; but, on the other hand, evidence is not wanting that they have always been native to the soil and came from a dog-like stock.

      As we have already seen, bears have the same dental formula as dogs, but as they are less carnivorous, their grinders have flatter surfaces and the sectorials are less sharp; in fact they have very little of the true sectorial character. It is unusual to find a full set of teeth in adult bears, as some of the premolars invariably drop out.

      It is fully as true of bears as of any other group of large mammals, that our views as to specific distinction are based upon data at present utterly inadequate, for all the zoological museums of the world do not contain sufficient material for exhaustive study and comparison. The present writer has examined many of these collections and has no hesitation in admitting that his ideas upon the subject are much less definite than they were ten years ago. It does appear, though, that in North America four quite distinct types can be made out. First of these is the circumpolar species, Ursus maritimus, the white or polar bear, which most of us grew up to regard as the very incarnation of tenacious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the recitals of late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a single shot, and does not seem to afford much better sport than so much rabbit shooting. The others are the great Kadiak bear (U. middendorfi); the grizzly (U. horribilis), and the black or true American bear (U. americanus). The extent to which the last three may be subdivided remains uncertain, but the barren-ground bear (U. richardsoni) is surely a valid species of the grizzly type. The grizzlies and the big Alaska bears approach more nearly than americanus to the widespread brown bear (U. arctos) of Europe and Asia, and the hypothesis is reasonable that they originated from that form or its immediate ancestors, in which case we have the interesting series of parallel modifications exhibited in the two continents, for the large bear of Kamtschatka approaches very nearly to those of Alaska, while further to the south in America, where the conditions of life more nearly resemble those surrounding arctos, these bears have in the grizzlies retained more of their original form. Whether or not the large Pleistocene cave bear (U. spelaeus) was a lineal ancestor is questionable, for in its later period, at least, it was contemporary with the existing European species. The black bear, with its litter-brother of brown color, seems to be a genuine product of the new world.

      Many differential characters have been pointed out in the skulls and teeth of bears, and to a less extent, in the claws; but while these undoubtedly exist, the conclusions to be drawn from them are uncertain, for the skulls of bears change greatly with age, and the constancy of these variations, with the values which they should hold in classification, we do not yet know.

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      It is not improbable that the reader may leave this brief survey with the feeling that its admissions of ignorance exceed its affirmations of certainty, and such is indeed the case, for the law of scientific validity forbids the statement as fact, of that concerning which the least element of doubt remains. But the real advance of zoological knowledge must not thereby be discredited, for it is due to those who have contributed to it to remember that little more than a generation ago these problems of life seemed wrapped in hopeless obscurity, and the methods of investigation which have led to practically all our present gains, were then but new born, and with every passing year doubts are dispelled, and theories turned into truths. There was no break in physical evolution when mental processes began, nor will there be in the evolution of knowledge as long as they continue to exist.

      Arthur Erwin Brown.

      [Illustration: TROPHIES FROM ALASKA.]

      Big Game Shooting in Alaska

      I.

      BEAR HUNTING ON KADIAK ISLAND

      Early in April, 1900, I made my first journey to Alaska for the purpose of searching out for myself the best big-game shooting grounds which were to be found in that territory. Few people who have not traveled in that country have any idea of its vastness. Away from the beaten paths, much of its 700,000 square miles is practically unknown, except to the wandering prospector and the Indian hunter. Therefore, since I could obtain but little definite information as to just where to go for the best shooting, I determined to make the primary object of my journey to locate the big-game districts of southern and western Alaska.

      My first two months were spent in the country adjacent to Fort Wrangell. Here one may expect to find black bear, brown bear, goats, and on almost all of the islands along the coast great numbers of the small Sitka deer, while grizzlies may these are the black, the grizzly, and the glacier or blue bear.[3] It is claimed that this last species has never fallen to a white man's rifle. It is found on the glaciers from the Lynn Canal to the northern range of the St. Elias Alps, and, as its name implies, is of a bluish color. I should judge from the skins I have seen that in size it is rather smaller than the black bear. What it lives upon in its range of eternal ice and snow is entirely a subject of surmise.

      [Footnote 3: The Polar bear is only found on the coast, and never below 61°. It is only found at this latitude when carried down on the ice in Bering Sea.]

      [Illustration: THE HUNTER AND HIS GAME.]

      Of all the varieties of brown bears, the one which has probably attracted most attention is the large bear of the Kadiak Islands. Before starting upon my journey I had communicated with Dr. Merriam, Chief of the Biological Survey, at Washington, and had learned from him all that he could tell me of this great bear. Mr. Harriman, while on his expedition to the Alaskan coast in 1899, had by great luck shot a specimen, and in the second volume of "Big Game Shooting" in "The Badminton Library," Mr. Clive Phillipps-Wolley writes of the largest "grizzly" of which he has any trustworthy information as being shot on Kadiak island by a Mr. J.C. Tolman. These were the only authentic records I could find of bears of this species which had fallen to the rifle of an amateur sportsman.

      After spending two months in southern Alaska, I determined to visit the Kadiak Islands in pursuit of this bear. I reached my destination the latter part of June, and three days later had started on my shooting expedition with native hunters. Unfortunately I had come too late in the season. The grass had shot up until it was shoulder high, making it most difficult to see at any distance the game I was after.

      The result of this, my first hunt, was that I actually saw but three bear, and got but one shot, which, I am ashamed to record, was a miss. Tracks there were in plenty along the salmon streams, and some of these were so large I concluded that as a sporting trophy a good example of the Kadiak bear should equal, if not surpass, in value any other kind of big game to be found on the North American continent. This opinion received confirmation later when I saw the size of the skins brought in by the natives to the two trading companies.

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      As I sailed away from Kadiak that fall morning I determined that my hunt was not really over, but only interrupted by the long northern winter, and that the next spring would find me once more in pursuit of this great bear.

      It was not only with the hope of shooting a Kadiak bear that I decided to make this second expedition, but I had become greatly interested in the big brute, and although no naturalist myself, it was now to be my aim to bring back to the СКАЧАТЬ