ys saw were grizzlies of a
different habitat. I've seen a grizzly with a hide almost red. But of
course you know that the 'cinnamon bear' is practically always a black
bear; and a black bear mother may have two cubs, one red and one quite
black.

"Scientists try to establish a dozen or two 'species' of bears--even
making different 'species' of the black bears of the southern
Mississippi bottoms--Arkansas, Louisiana, etc.--and I don't know how
many sorts of 'blue bears' and 'straw bears,' 'glacier bears,' etc.,
among the grizzlies. Of course, bears differ, just as men do. But the
one thing which remains constant is the length of the claws, or front
toe nails--what the _Journal_ calls their 'talons.' In a black bear
these are always short. In a grizzly they are always long--they get them
up to four and one-half inches, and I believe some of your Kadiaks have
even longer claws. Colors grade, but claws don't. I even think the polar
bear is a grizzly of the North--white because he lives on snow and ice,
and with a snaky head because he has to swim. But his claws he needed
and kept.

"The long-clawed bears were all predatory; the short-clawed ones never
were. Not long ago I read a magazine story about a black bear which
killed a moose with seven-foot horns. There never was a black bear ever
killed any moose, and there never was any moose with horns that wide.
Such things are nonsense--like a great part of the magazine animal
fiction."

Rob was interested. "Too bad they've trapped off about all the
grizzlies," he said now. "I've tried a lot of kinds of sport, and of
them all, I like grizzly hunting, quail shooting, and fly fishing for
trout."

"Not a bad selection! Well, the first is hard to get now. The grizzly is
closer to extinction than the elk or the buffalo, for the buffalo breed
in domestic life, and the grizzly--well, he hasn't domesticated yet.
He's the one savage--he and the gray wolf--that would never civilize.
And he's gone."

"But, Uncle Dick, those bears must have been a different species from
grizzlies nowadays. Look how they fought? Even Lewis came near being
killed by them more than once."

"Yes, they'd fight, in those days, for they were bigger and bolder, and
they had not yet learned fear of the rifle. You must remember that
while, in this country up to the Mandans, the early traders had been
ahead of Lewis and Clark, above the Yellowstone no white man ever had
gone. Those bears thought a white man