forward and tines projecting from its hinder border, takes practically
the whole of America in its range, and under the law of variation which
has been stated, has proved a veritable gold mine to the makers of
names. At present it is utterly useless to attempt to determine which of
the forms described will stand the scrutiny of the future, and no more
will be attempted here than to state the present gross contents of
cervine literature. The sub-genus _Dorcelaphus_ contains all the
forms of the United States; of these, the deer belonging east of the
Missouri River, those from the great plains to the Pacific, those along
the Rio Grande in Texas and Mexico, those of Florida, and those again of
Sonora, are each rated as sub-species of _virginiana_; to which we
must add six more, ranging from Mexico to Bolivia. One full species,
_M. truei,_ has been described from Central America, and another
rather anomalous creature (_M. crookii_), resembling both
white-tail and mule deer, from New Mexico.
The other sub-genera are _Blastoceros,_ with branched antlers and
no metatarsal gland; _Xenelaphus,_ smaller in size, with small,
simply forked antlers and no metatarsal gland; _Mazama_, containing
the so-called brockets, very small, with minute spike antlers, lacking
the metatarsal and sometimes the tarsal gland as well. The last three
sub-genera are South American and do not enter the United
States. Another genus, _Pudua_, from Chili, is much like the
brockets, but has exceedingly short cannon bones, and some of the tarsal
bones are united in a manner unlike other deer. In all, thirty specific
and sub-specific names are now carried on the roll of _Mazama_ and
its allies.
Attention has already been directed to the parallelism between the
course of progress from simple to complex antlers in the development of
the deer tribe, and the like progress in the growth of each individual,
and to the further fact that all the stages are represented in the
mature antlers of existing species. But a curious result follows from a
study of the past distribution of deer in America. At a time when the
branched stage had been already reached in North America, the isthmus of
Panama was under water; deer were then absent from South America and the
earliest forms found fossil there had antlers of the type of
_M. virginiana_. The small species with simple antlers only made
their appearance in later periods, and it follows that they are
descended from those of complex type. This third parallel series,
therefore, instead of being direct as are the other two, is reversed,
and the degeneration of the antler, which we have seen taking place in
the southern deer, has followed backward on the line of previous
advance, or, in biological language, appears to be a true case of
retrogressive evolution--representing the fossil series, as it were, in
a mirror.
The reindeer-caribou type, of the genus _Rangifer,_ agrees with
American deer in having the vertical plate of the vomer complete, and in
having the lower ends of the lateral metacarpals remaining, but, like
_Cervus,_ it has a brow-tine to the antlers. Of its early history
we know nothing, for the only related forms which have yet come to light
are of no great antiquity, being confined to the Pleistocene of Europe
as far south as France, and are not distinguishable from existing
species. Until recently it has been supposed that one species was found
in northern Europe and Asia, and two others, a northern and a southern,
in North America, but lately the last two have been subdivided, and the
present practice is to regard the Scandinavian reindeer (_Rangifer
tarandus_) as the type, with eight or nine other species or
sub-species, consisting of the two longest known American forms, the
northern, or barren-ground caribou (_R. arcticus_); the southern, or
woodland (_R. caribou_); the three inhabiting respectively
Spitzbergen, Greenland and Newfoundland, and still more lately four more
from British Columbia and Alaska. The differences between these are not
very profound, but they seem on the whole to represent two types: the
barren-ground, small of size, with long, slender antlers but little
palmated; and the woodland, larger, with shorter and more massive
antlers, usually with broad palms. There is some reason to believe that
both these types lived in Europe during the interglacial period, the
first-named being probably the earlier and confined to western Europe,
while the other extended into Asia. The present reindeer of Greenland
and Spitzbergen seem to agree most closely with the barren-ground, while
the southern forms are nearest to the woodland, and these are said to
also resemble the reindeer of Siberia. It is, therefore, not an
improbable conjecture that there were two migrations into America, one
of the barren-ground type from western Europe, by way of the Spitzbergen
land connection, and the other of the woodland, from Siberia, by way of
Alaska.
Little more can be said, perhaps even less, of the other circumpolar
genus, _Alces_, known in America as "moose," and across the
Atlantic as "elk." It also is of mixed character in relation to the two
great divisions we have had in mind, but in a different way from
reindeer.
Like American deer it has the lower ends of the lateral metacarpals
remaining, and the antlers are without a brow-tine, but like
_Cervus_ it has an incomplete vomer, and unlike deer in general,
the antlers are set laterally on the frontal bone, instead of more or
less vertically, and the nasal bones are excessively short. The animal
of northern Europe and Asia is usually considered to be distinct from
the American, and lately the Alaskan moose has been christened _Alces
gigas_, marked by greater size, relatively more massive skull, and
huge antlers. Of the antecedents of _Alces_, as in the case of the
reindeer, we are ignorant. The earlier Pleistocene of Europe has yielded
nearly related fossils,[2] and a peculiar and probably rather later form
comes from New Jersey and Kentucky. This last in some respects suggests
a resemblance to the wapiti, but it is unlikely that the similarity is
more than superficial, and as moose not distinguishable from the
existing species are found in the same formation, it is improbable that
_Cervalces_ bore to _AIces_ anything more than a collateral
relationship.
[Footnote 2: The huge fossil known as "Irish elk" is really a fallow
deer and in no way nearly related to the moose.]
Even to an uncritical eye, the differences between ungulates and
carnivores of to-day are many and obvious, but as we trace them back
into the past we follow on converging lines, and in our search for the
prototypes of the carnivora we are led to the _Creodonta_,
contemporary with _Condylarthra_, which we have seen giving origin
to hoofed beasts, but outlasting them into the succeeding age. These two
groups of generalized mammals approached each other so nearly in
structure, that it is even doubtful to which of them certain outlying
fossils should be referred, and the assumption is quite justified that
they had a common ancestor in the preceding period, of which no record
is yet known.
The most evident points in which _Carnivora_ differ from
_Ungulata_ are their possession of at least four and frequently
five digits, which always bear claws and never hoofs; all but the sea
otter have six small incisor teeth in each jaw; the canines are large;
the molars never show flattened, curved crests after the ruminant
pattern, but are more or less tubercular, and one tooth in the hinder
part of each jaw becomes blade-like, for shearing off lumps of
flesh. This tooth is called the sectorial, or carnassial.
Existing carnivores are conveniently divided into three sections:
_Arctoidea_--bears, raccoons, otters, skunks, weasels, etc.;
_Canoidea_--dogs, wolves and foxes; _Aeluroidea_--cats,
civets, ichneumons and hyaenas.
It is highly probable that these three chief types have descended in as
many distinct lines from the _Creodonta_, and that they were
differentiated as early as the middle Eocene, but their exact degree of
affinity is uncertain; bears and dogs are certainly closer together than
either of them are to cats, and it is questionable if otters and
weasels--the _Mustelidae_, as they are termed--and raccoons are
really near of kin to bears.
Seals are often regarded as belonging to this order, but their relation
to the rest of the carnivores is very doubtful. Many of their characters
are suggestive of _Arctoidea_, but it is an open question if their
ancestors were bear or otter-like animals which took to an aquatic life,
or whether they may not have had a long and independent descent. At all
events, doubt is cast upon the proposition that they are descended from
anything nearly like present land forms by the fact that seals of
already high development are known as early as the later Miocene.
The difficulty so constantly met with in attempting to state concisely
the details of classification, is well shown in this order, for its
subdivisions rest less upon a few well defined characters than upon
complex associations of a number of lesser and more obscure ones, a
recapitulation of which would be tedious beyond the endurance of all but
practiced anatomists. For the present purposes it must be enough to say
that bears and dogs have forty-two teeth in the complete set, of which
four on each side above and below are premolars, and two above, with
three below, are molars, but these teeth in bears have flatter crowns
and more rounded tubercles than those of dogs, and the sectorial teeth
are much less blade-like, this style of tooth being better adapted to
their omnivorous food habits. Bears, furthermore, have five digits on
each foot and are plantigrade, while dogs have but four toes behind and
are digitigrade. These differences are less marked in some of the
smaller arctoids, which may have as few as thirty-two teeth, and come
very near to dogs in the extent of the digital surface which rests upon
the ground in walking.
In distinction from these, _Aeluroidea_ never have more than two
true molars below, and the cusps of their teeth are much more sharply
edged, reaching in the sectorials the extreme of scissor-like
specialization. In all of them the claws are more or less retractile,
and they walk on the ends of their fingers and toes.
Cats are distinguished from the remainder of this section by the
shortness of the skull, and reduction of the teeth to thirty, there
being but one true molar on each side, that of the upper jaw being so
minute that it is probably getting ready to disappear.
Civets, genets, and ichneumons are small as compared with most cats;
they are fairly well distinguished by skull and tooth characters; their
claws are never fully retractile, and many have scent glands, as in the
civets. No member of this family is American.
Hyaenas have the same dental formula as cats, but their teeth are
enormously strong and massive, in relation to their function of crushing
bone.
No carnivore has teeth so admirably adapted to a diet of flesh as the
cat, and, in fact, it may be doubted if among all mammals, it has a
superior in structural fitness to its life habits in general.
The _Felidae_ are an exceedingly uniform group, although they do
present minor differences; thus, some species have the orbits completely
encircled by bone, while in most of them these are more or less widely
open behind; in some the first upper premolar is absent, and some have a
round pupil, while in others it is elliptical or vertical, but if there
is a key to the apparently promiscuous distribution of these variations,
it has not yet been found, and no satisfactory sub-division of the genus
has been made, beyond setting aside the hunting-leopard or cheetah as
_Cynaelurus_, upon peculiarities of skull and teeth.
True cats of the genus _Felis_ were in existence before the close
of the Miocene, and yet earlier related forms are known. Throughout the
greater part of the Tertiary the remarkable type known as sabre-toothed
cats were numerous and widely spread, and in South America they even
lasted so far into the Pleistocene that it is probably true that they
existed side by side with man. Some of them were as large as any
existing cat and had upper canines six inches or more in length. Cats
have no near relations upon the American continent, nor do they appear
to have ever had many except the sabre-tooths. Of present species some
fifty are known, inhabiting all of the greater geographical areas except
Australia. They are tropical and heat loving, but the short-tailed
lynxes are northern, while both the tiger and leopard in Asia, and puma
in America, range into sub-arctic temperatures, and it is a curious
anomaly that while Siberian tigers have gained the protection of a long,
warm coat of hair, pumas from British America differ very little in this
respect from those of warm regions.
No other cat has so extensive a range as _Felis concolor_ and its
close allies, variously known as puma, cougar and mountain lion, which
extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from latitude fifty-five
or sixty north, to the extreme southern end of the continent. As far as
is known, it is a recent development, for no very similar remains appear
previous to post-tertiary deposits.
Bears of the genus _Ursus_ are of no great antiquity in a
geological sense, for we have no knowledge of them earlier than the
Pliocene of Europe, and even later in America, but fossils becoming
gradually less bear-like and approximating toward the early type from
which dogs also probably sprung, go back to the early Tertiary
creodonts.
Cats, as we have seen, are chiefly tropical, while bears, with two
exceptions, are northern, one species inhabiting the Chilian Andes,
while the brown bear of Europe extends into North Africa as far as the
Atlas Mountains.
The family _Procyonidae_ contains the existing species which appear
to be nearest of kin to bears. These are all small and consist of the
well-known raccoon, the coatis, the ring-tailed bassaris and the
kinkajou, all differing from bears in varying details of tooth and other
structures. The curious little panda (_Aelurus fulgens_) from the
Himalayas, is very suggestive of raccoons, and as forms belonging to
this genus inhabited England in Pliocene times, it is possible that we
have pointed out to us here the origin of this, at present, strictly
American family; but, on the other hand, evidence is not wanting that
they have always been native to the soil and came from a dog-like stock.
As we have already seen, bears have the same dental formula as dogs, but
as they are less carnivorous, their grinders have flatter surfaces and
the sectorials are less sharp; in fact they have very little of the true
sectorial character. It is unusual to find a full set of teeth in adult
bears, as some of the premolars invariably drop out.
It is fully as true of bears as of any other group of large mammals,
that our views as to specific distinction are based upon data at present
utterly inadequate, for all the zoological museums of the world do not
contain sufficient material for exhaustive study and comparison. The
present writer has examined many of these collections and has no
hesitation in admitting that his ideas upon the subject are much less
definite than they were ten years ago. It does appear, though, that in
North America four quite distinct types can be made out. First of these
is the circumpolar species, _Ursus maritimus_, the white or polar
bear, which most of us grew up to regard as the very incarnation of
tenacious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the recitals of
late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a single shot, and does not
seem to afford much better sport than so much rabbit shooting.
The others are the great Kadiak bear (_U. middendorfi_); the
grizzly (_U. horribilis_), and the black or true American bear
(_U. americanus_). The extent to which the last three may
be subdivided remains uncertain, but the barren-ground bear
(_U. richardsoni_) is surely a valid species of the grizzly type.
The grizzlies and the big Alaska bears approach more nearly than
_americanus_ to the widespread brown bear (_U. arctos_) of
Europe and Asia, and the hypothesis is reasonable that they originated
from that form or its immediate ancestors, in which case we have the
interesting series of parallel modifications exhibited in the two
continents, for the large bear of Kamtschatka approaches very nearly to
those of Alaska, while further to the south in America, where the
conditions of life more nearly resemble those surrounding _arctos_,
these bears have in the grizzlies retained more of their original form.
Whether or not the large Pleistocene cave bear (_U. spelaeus_) was a
lineal ancestor is questionable, for in its later period, at least, it was
contemporary with the existing European species. The black bear, with its
litter-brother of brown color, seems to be a genuine product of the new
world.
Many differential characters have been pointed out in the skulls and teeth
of bears, and to a less extent, in the claws; but while these undoubtedly
exist, the conclusions to be drawn from them are uncertain, for the
skulls of bears change greatly with age, and the constancy of these
variations, with the values which they should hold in classification,
we do not yet know.
* * * * *
It is not improbable that the reader may leave this brief survey with
the feeling that its admissions of ignorance exceed its affirmations of
certainty, and such is indeed the case, for the law of scientific
validity forbids the statement as fact, of that concerning which the
least element of doubt remains. But the real advance of zoological
knowledge must not thereby be discredited, for it is due to those who
have contributed to it to remember that little more than a generation
ago these problems of life seemed wrapped in hopeless obscurity, and the
methods of investigation which have led to practically all our present
gains, were then but new born, and with every passing year doubts are
dispelled, and theories turned into truths. There was no break in
physical evolution when mental processes began, nor will there be in the
evolution of knowledge as long as they continue to exist.
_Arthur Erwin Brown_.
[Illustration: TROPHIES FROM ALASKA.]
Big Game Shooting in Alaska
I.
BEAR HUNTING ON KADIAK ISLAND
Early in April, 1900, I made my first journey to Alaska for the purpose
of searching out for myself the best big-game shooting grounds which
were to be found in that territory. Few people who have not traveled in
that country have any idea of its vastness. Away from the beaten paths,
much of its 700,000 square miles is practically unknown, except to the
wandering prospector and the Indian hunter. Therefore, since I could
obtain but little definite information as to just where to go for the
best shooting, I determined to make the primary object of my journey to
locate the big-game districts of southern and western Alaska.
My first two months were spent in the country adjacent to Fort
Wrangell. Here one may expect to find black bear, brown bear, goats, and
on almost all of the islands along the coast great numbers of the small
Sitka deer, while grizzlies may these are the black, the grizzly, and
the glacier or blue bear.[3] It is claimed that this last species has
never fallen to a white man's rifle. It is found on the glaciers from
the Lynn Canal to the northern range of the St. Elias Alps, and, as its
name implies, is of a bluish color. I should judge from the skins I have
seen that in size it is rather smaller than the black bear. What it
lives upon in its range of eternal ice and snow is entirely a subject of
surmise.
[Footnote 3: The Polar bear is only found on the coast, and never below
61°. It is only found at this latitude when carried down on the ice in
Bering Sea.]
[Illustration: THE HUNTER AND HIS GAME.]
Of all the varieties of brown bears, the one which has probably
attracted most attention is the large bear of the Kadiak Islands. Before
starting upon my journey I had communicated with Dr. Merriam, Chief of
the Biological Survey, at Washington, and had learned from him all that
he could tell me of this great bear. Mr. Harriman, while on his
expedition to the Alaskan coast in 1899, had by great luck shot a
specimen, and in the second volume of "Big Game Shooting" in "The
Badminton Library," Mr. Clive Phillipps-Wolley writes of the largest
"grizzly" of which he has any trustworthy information as being shot on
Kadiak island by a Mr. J.C. Tolman. These were the only authentic
records I could find of bears of this species which had fallen to the
rifle of an amateur sportsman.
After spending two months in southern Alaska, I determined to visit the
Kadiak Islands in pursuit of this bear. I reached my destination the
latter part of June, and three days later had started on my shooting
expedition with native hunters. Unfortunately I had come too late in the
season. The grass had shot up until it was shoulder high, making it most
difficult to see at any distance the game I was after.
The result of this, my first hunt, was that I actually saw but three
bear, and got but one shot, which, I am ashamed to record, was a miss.
Tracks there were in plenty along the salmon streams, and some of these
were so large I concluded that as a sporting trophy a good example of
the Kadiak bear should equal, if not surpass, in value any other kind of
big game to be found on the North American continent. This opinion
received confirmation later when I saw the size of the skins brought in
by the natives to the two trading companies.
* * * * *
As I sailed away from Kadiak that fall morning I determined that my hunt
was not really over, but only interrupted by the long northern winter,
and that the next spring would find me once more in pursuit of this
great bear.
It was not only with the hope of shooting a Kadiak bear that I decided
to make this second expedition, but I had become greatly interested in
the big brute, and although no naturalist myself, it was now to be my
aim to bring back to the scientists at Washington as much definite
material about him as possible. Therefore the objects of my second trip
were:
Firstly, to obtain a specimen of bear from the Island of Kadiak;
secondly, to obtain specimens of the bears found on the Alaska
Peninsula; and, lastly, to obtain, if possible, a specimen of bear from
one of the other islands of the Kadiak group. With such material I
hoped that it could at least be decided definitely if all the bears of
the Kadiak Islands are of one species; if all the bears on the Alaska
Peninsula are of one species; and also if the Kadiak bear is found on
the mainland, for there are unquestionably many points of similarity
between the bears of the Kadiak Islands and those of the Alaska
Peninsula. It was also my plan, if I was successful in all these
objects, to spend the fall on the Kenai Peninsula in pursuit of the
white sheep and the moose.
Generally I have made it a point to go alone on all big-game shooting
trips, but on this journey I was fortunate in having as companion an old
college friend, Robert P. Blake.
My experience of the year before was of value in getting our outfit
together. At almost all points in Alaska most of the necessary
provisions can be bought, but I should rather advise one to take all but
the commonest necessities with him, for frequently the stocks at the
various trading posts run low. For this reason we took with us from
Seattle sufficient provisions to last us six months, and from time to
time, as necessity demanded, added to our stores. As the rain falls
almost daily in much of the coast country, we made it a point to supply
ourselves liberally with rubber boots and rain-proof clothing.
On the 6th of March, 1901, we sailed from Seattle on one of the monthly
steamers, and arrived at Kadiak eleven days later. I shall not attempt
to describe this beautiful island, but shall merely say that Kadiak is
justly termed the "garden spot of Alaska." It has numerous deep bays
which cut into the land many miles. These bays in turn have arms which
branch out in all directions, and the country adjacent to these latter
is the natives' favorite hunting ground for bear.
[Illustration: LOADED BAIDARKA--BARABARA--BASE OF SUPPLIES, ALASKA
PENINSULA.]
In skin canoes (baidarkas) the Aleuts, paddling along the shore, keep a
sharp lookout on the nearby hillsides, where the bears feed upon the
young and tender grass. It was our plan to choose the most likely one of
these big bays as our shooting grounds, and hunt from a baidarka,
according to local custom.