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The bear is the most human of all the beasts. He is not the most man-like in anatomy, nor the nearest in the line of evolution. The likeness is rather in his temper and way of doing things and in the vicissitudes of his life. He is a savage, of course, but most men are that—wild members of a wild fauna—and, like wild men, the bear is a clumsy, good-natured blunderer, eating with his fingers in default of a knife, and preferring any day a mouthful of berries to the excitement of a fight.

In this book Joaquin Miller has tried to show us the bear as he is, not the traditional bear of the story-books. In season and out of season, the bear has been represented always the same bear, “as much alike as so many English noblemen in evening dress,” and always as a bloody bear.

Mr. Miller insists that there are bears and bears, as unlike one another in nature and action as so many horses, hogs or goats. This mon—bears are never cruel. They are generally full of homely, careless kindness, and are very fond of music as well as of honey, blackberries, nuts, fish and other delicacies of the savage feast.

The matter of season affects a bear’s temper and looks as the time of the day affects those of a man.

He goes to bed in the fall, when the fish and berry season is over, fat and happy, with no fight in him. He comes out in spring, just as good-natured, if not so fat. But the hot sun melts him down. His hungry hunt for roots, bugs, ants and small game makes him lean and cross. His claws grow long, his hair is unkempt and he is soon a shaggy ghost of himself, looking “like a second-hand sofa with the stuffing coming out,” and in this out-at-elbows condition he loses his own self-respect.

Mr. Miller has strenuously insisted that bears of the United States are of more than one or two species. In this he has the unqualified support of the latest scientific investigations. Not long ago naturalists were disposed to recognize but three kinds of bear in North America. These are the polar bear, the black bear, and the grizzly bear, and even the grizzly was thought doubtful, a slight variation of the bear of Europe.

But the careful study of bears’ skulls has changed all that, and our highest authority on bears, Dr. C. Hart Merriam of the Department of Agriculture, now recognizes not less than ten species of bear in the limits of the United States and Alaska.

In his latest paper (1896), a “Preliminary Synopsis of the American Bears,” Dr. Merriam groups these animals as follows:

I. POLAR BEARS.

1. Polar Bear: Thalarctos maritimus Linnaeus. Found on all Arctic shores.

II. BLACK BEARS.

2. Common Black Bear (sometimes brown or cinnamon): Ursus americanus Pallas. Found throughout the United States.

3. Yellow Bear (sometimes black or brown): Ursus luteolus Griffith. Swamps of Louisiana and Texas.

4. Everglade Bear: Ursus floridanus Merriam. Everglades of Florida.

5. Glacier Bear: Ursus emmonsi Dall. About Mount St. Elias.

III. GRIZZLY BEARS.

6. The Grizzly Bear: Ursus horribilis Ord. Found in the western parts of North America.

Under this species are four varieties: the original horribilis, or Rocky Mountain grizzly, from Montana to the Great Basin of Utah; the variety californicus Merriam, the California grizzly, from the Sierra Nevada; variety horriaeus Baird, the Sonora grizzly, from Arizona and the South; and variety alascensis Merriam, the Alaska grizzly, from Alaska.

7. The Barren Ground Bear: Ursus richardsoni Mayne Reid. A kind of grizzly found about Hudson Bay.

IV. GREAT BROWN BEARS.

8. The Yakutat Bear: Ursus dalli Merriam. From about Mount St. Elias.

9. The Sitka Bear: Ursus sitkensis Merriam. From about Sitka.

10. The Kadiak Bear: Ursus middendorfi Merriam. From Kadiak and the Peninsula of Alaska.

These three bears are even larger than the grizzly, and the Kadiak Bear is the largest of all the land bears of the world. It prowls about over the moss of the mountains, feeding on berries and fish.

The sea-bear, Callorhinus ursinus, which we call the fur seal, is also a cousin of the bear, having much in common with its bear ancestors of long ago, but neither that nor its relations, the sea-lion and the walrus, are exactly bears to-day.

Of all the real bears, Mr. Miller treats of five in the pages of this little book. All the straight “bear stories” relate to Ursus americanus, as most bear stories in our country do. The grizzly stories treat of Ursus horribilis californicus. The lean bear of the Louisiana swamps is Ursus luteolus, and the Polar Bear is Thalarctos maritimus. The author of the book has tried without intrusion of technicalities to bring the distinctive features of the different bears before the reader and to instruct as well as to interest children and children’s parents in the simple realities of bear life.

David Starr Jordan.

Leland Stanford, Jr., University.

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TRUE BEAR STORIES.