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102 THE GRIZZLY BEAR

I will call them by that name for convenience—is very light, shading from brown to orangy yellow and occasion- ally even approaching whiteness. Their claws are com- paratively small, and have more of a curve and are not so white as are those of most interior grizzlies. In size they are the smallest of all the species.

Ursus horribilis of eastern British Columbia is of medium size, and has the dark, often almost black, undercolour and light-tipped hair from which the name grizzly originated. They usually have a light yellowish-coloured strip of hair behind the fore-shoulder. They are locally called “‘ silver- tips.” These silver-tips are essentially mountain bears, and seldom visit valleys of low altitude unless they happen to be trekking from one mountain to another. Their regular habitat is high up near timber line, where they wander from one slide to another digging up roots, looking for goats that have met an untimely end, but above all in quest of ground squirrels and other marmots. All grizzly relish ground squirrels, but the “‘ silver-tip ’? seems to be a glutton for them, and in the spring cannot wait until the snow is gone but digs through deep snow banks after them. I once came across a tunnel in the snow eight or ten feet long which had been dug by a grizzly, simply to find a squirrel that had evidently betrayed his whereabouts by digging his way out before the snow melted. The tunnel the bear had dug was high enough for me to walk in, by stooping, until towards the end ; then it narrowed up until at the very last it was evident that the bear had just used one paw to scoop a hole with, as it was not more than a foot in diameter.

Owing to the great amount of digging these ‘“ silver- tips’? do, they have developed enormous claws that are very light-coloured for their whole length.

Of all the game on this continent there is no species of game whose hunting is so uncertain as that of the grizzly, and yet there are numbers of them. If you travelled over any part of the coast, Cascade, Selkirk, Purcell, or Rocky Mountain ranges, you would frequently be in close proximity to grizzlies. Whether you would lay eyes on one, to say