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The brown bear of Russian America and the Aleutian Islands appears to be identical with this species; and there is a suspicion, that the brown species of Kamschatka is no other than the Barren Ground bear of the Hudson's Bay. The fishing habits of the former go some ways towards an identification of the two species at the same time separating both from the ursus arctos of Scandinavia.
It is true that hunters now and then meet with an odd ringed bear of tolerable size and age; but all agree that he is the brown bear, and not a distinct kind. The same remarks apply to the `silver' bear; and hunters say that in a litter of three cubs they have found all three colours the common brown, the `ringed, and the `silver, while the old mother herself was a true ursus arctos."
"Oh, yes!" answered Ivan; "you mean that when Linnaeus published his `System of Nature, only our own brown bear of Europe was known to naturalists?" "Precisely so only the ursus arctos; and consequently we should have had but a very short journey to make, compared with what is before us now. "Oh, they are very different. I could tell that myself.
Besides remains of the beaver, I was shown, in the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes, two perfect lower jaws with teeth of the bear, Ursus arctos; and in the Paris Museum there is another specimen, also from the Abbeville peat.
God had not yet 'Bid his angels turn askance this oblique globe. There was, therefore, then no country that groaned under 'The rage of Arctos, and eternal frost. There was no violent winter, or sultry summer; no extreme either of heat or cold. No soil was burned up by the solar heat: none uninhabitable through the want of it.
To compare the Barren Ground bear with the ursus arctos. The former is certainly much more like this species, than he is to the ursus americanus; but again we encounter notable points of difference; and were it not for a certain resemblance in colour, it is possible the two kinds would never have been brought into comparison.
These bears often attain to an immense size in this respect nearly equalling the ursus arctos, of which they cannot, however, be supposed to be a variety. Eight feet is the usual length of a full-grown specimen; and, when in a good condition, it requires a whole crowd of men to raise the carcass of one of them from the ground.
Our author says genially, 'if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a totem of the Arcadians . . . why not? But, if the arctos was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the philological theory Mr. Max Muller's theory does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr.
The claws of the animal are small and weak; and its profile forms almost a straight line, thus essentially differing from the ursus arctos. It is also a much smaller animal rarely attaining to more than half the size of the latter species, and scarce bigger than the ursus malayanus, to which it bears a far greater resemblance.
So characteristic is this appendage for its extreme shortness, that it is a standing joke among the Indians when they have killed a grizzly bear to desire any one unacquainted with the animal, to take hold of its tail! This appendage in the ursus americanus and ursus arctos is conspicuous enough; and in the Barren Ground bear is still longer than in either.
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