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Updated: June 6, 2025
To North America, I suppose?" "By no means. There is a bear in the Pyrenees, and other mountains of Spain in the Asturias especially. It is also deemed by most naturalists to be only a variety of the ursus arctos, but it is certainly a distinct species; and papa thinks so. Some naturalists would have it that there are only three or four distinct species in the whole world.
Those who acknowledge it, are inclined to regard the Syrian bear as a mere variety of the ursus arctos; but this theory is altogether incorrect. In shape, colour, and many of his habits, the Syrian bear differs essentially from his brown congener; and his dwelling-place instead of being in forest-covered tracts is more generally in open ground or among rocks.
In this respect he is far more akin to the bears of the Asiatic islands, than to the ursus arctos. In shape, too, he differs essentially from the latter. His body is more slender, his muzzle longer and sharper, and his profile is a curve with its convexity upward.
It is easy, however, to prove them also distinct species by simply observing that their habits are altogether unlike. The ursus arctos is a tree-climbing wood bear: the Barren Ground species is not. The former prefers a vegetable diet the latter likes better fish, flesh, and insects though he will also fill his stomach with a farrago of vegetable matters.
It proved incontestably, what he already suspected, and what, moreover, the native peasants and hunters had told him, that the "silver" and "ringed" bears were identical with the ursus arctos. Notwithstanding their joy at the capture of the old she, and her parti-coloured pets, they were yet very anxious about the black bear.
In the more densely wooded solitudes, and higher declivities of the mountains, a large bear is found, whose light fulvous-coloured body and black paws pronounce him a different animal from the ursus arctos. If he be the same species, as naturalists assert, he claims at least to be a permanent variety, and deserves his distinctive appellation of ursus pyrenaicus.
Is the ursus arctos of Europe confined to these limits? Are the bears of South America? the sloth bear of India and Ceylon? the bruang of Borneo? and his near congener, the bruang of Java and Sumatra? Why, these last are actually dwellers among palm-trees as the cocoa-planters know to their cost!
They ascertained, moreover, that he was far from being a scarce animal, or an insignificant member of the Bruin family; in point of size, formidable strength, and ferocity of disposition, being only inferior to ursus ferox and maritimus, and in all these qualities quite a match for the ursus arctos.
But, indeed, the Syrian bear may be easily distinguished from any other member of this family; and to regard him as a mere variety of the ursus arctos, is only going back to the old system that considers all the bears as one and the same species. The Syrian bear does not inhabit the whole range of the mountains that pass under the general name of Lebanon.
Its grotesque appearance makes it a great favourite with the Indian mountebanks; but, as many other species are also trained to dancing and monkey-tricks, the name is not characteristic. This bear is not quite so large as the ursus arctos; though individuals are sometimes met with approaching the bulk of the latter.
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