The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-05

. N'''AANi AAAst huiihtAS Nlil ANNih thN P'e'N'
 qbear of the deed Black bears, at
 least, never attack human beings un-
 less their cause is desperate or they have been maddened by pain of wounds.
 A whole family of black, bears will do
 everything possible to get out of the way of lone and unarmed man, even
 if hungry, and will go miles to avoid 6 camp of hunters and select the darkest
 night for prowling, among pigpens and
 sheepfolds. But the good nature and retiring character of the bear may be changed in a moment if it Is hurt or so closely followed by hunter that 1t sees no means of escape. In twinkling the most amlable black bear may become an animated cyclone and dash at it's pursuers to kill or be killed.
 The sense of smell in bear is extra
 ordinary. One has been known to scent an ant-hill or tree filled with honey
 mile away. Hunters of bears have any number of stories to tell of the sagacity of black bears seeking their food, It is common for person walking through 1 the sparse timber up in the California mountain valleys to come upon the ru- ins of a great dome-like hill of ants. It shows where bear has had a feast, for | Bruin Is always on the alert for such a community of ants, and never wastes any time Tn making the attack. With one sweep of it's powerful forepaw it demolishes the roof of the anthill. The maze of courts, galleries and tunnels made by the ants is laid bare. In a moment the bear has put it's open mouth down into the hill where the
 tunnels and galleries run into central | chamber like a hopper and sucks into his mouth ants and their eggs. A doz- en strong inhalations will generally de- populate an ant community and leave very few eggs for another generation of ants to build up city on the ruins left by the bears attack. Then Bruin will go about licking up the heaps of stray ants that have escaped from the hill. l The liking of bears for grubs, field mice, grasshoppers and all manner of creeping things affords one of the signs 1 that Bruin is in the country. Often family of black bears, in their search for this kind of diet, will turn over eve ry stone, paw over every rotting tree stump and break down brush for an acre. The hunters get their easiest pointers to the haunts of bears by com ing upon an area so disturbed.
 l The choicest food for bears is honey, and the skill with which they find a tree filled with wild honey is another one of the wonderful things about the beasts. Men who have been bee hunt CTS and honey gathers in the canons and foothills of California for years say they don't begin to have the unerring precision of a bear in locating a bee | tree. In Mexico, especially in Lower California, the natives who make bus | mess of gathering honey have tame | black bears to locate bees and honey for | them. When wild bear scents honey it will never let up, unless wounded or slain, until 1t has found the tree hold | ing the sweetness. When at last the store of honey is found, Bruin will
 thump up and down the trunk of the tree with forepaws until it gets hollow sound. In a moment more it has scratched and chewed away the bark and wood until it makes a hole large enough to thrust in paw and draw it out dripping with honey. Like a child eating preserves, the bear repeatedly sops it's great paw with honey and ticks l it with delight A swarm of angry bees may buzz about it's head and get into its wide-open mouth, but that does not bother the bear. It just shuts it's eyes and, smiling to itself in ecstasy. keeps on sopping honey with its paw and licking it off.
 Bruin is the foremost angler among l animals. Natural history books are | filled with all kinds of stories of the sa- | gacity of black bears as fishermen. l The mountain streams and the head- waters of the rivers in California, where black bears roam, afford excel- l lent facilities for them to exercise ex- 1 pertness as fishers. In Oregon and | Washington the salmon fishermen have no end of funny stories to relate l of Bruins ways of getting it's food along deep and swift rivers. Bruin will stand In a creek or canon stream as sol emn and motionless as a crane, all the time keeping It's eyes on the water. When a fish come unsuspectingly near by one of Bruins fore paws darts into the water as quick as thought, and it is very agile fish that escapes the ami
 malls claws as they contract. A look of ! supreme contentment and pride in it's skill spreads over its solemn visage as ] IL urdWS tUe SQulFHtlnS I1Sn rom the water and prepares to eat it. Brun | usually squats in the water and swal- lows it's prey while grunting with satis-
 faction. Sometimes when tAe parent bears are teaching their cubs to fish, human observers laugh to see the fe- male frequently deal to her offspring a l cuff because of some clumsness by l which a fish has been allowed to get away, or because frolicsome child will l founder about in the water so that fish are either scared away or the water be- comes too muddy for fishing.
 A never-ending discussion among hunters and woodsmen in the moun- tains concerns the character the black | bear exhibits in the home circle or l within the cavernous confines of the | bear household. Some authorities say that the bear is mean. selfish fellow, 1 and has no care for it's mate or thought | for it's offspring, and that the moment | it becomes father, that moment quits the family domicile, leaving all there to shift for themselves. A larger number, and, it seems, more accurate authori- Ves, contend that the bear is libelled by these detractors, and that Bruin is really very helpful to Mime. Bruin in the first weeks of her motherhood Hunt CTS who have watched from concealed spots and through field-g glasses the do-