Mr. Sclater, the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, writes me that the best naturalists only recognise three species of bears in North America, namely: the Grizzly (_Ursus horribilis_), the Black Bear (_Ursus americanus_), and the Polar Bear (_Ursus maritimus_). My correspondent adds that ‘a lot of varieties and sub-species have been made, but not upon any certain characters.’ Among these varieties and sub-species may, I suppose, be reckoned _Ursus Richardsonii_, the Alaskan grizzly, as well as a whole host of bears, best known to Western trappers as cinnamon bears, silver-tips, roach-backs, bald-faces, and range bears. Luckily for me, the question of species is one for naturalists rather than for sportsmen to decide; the claim to rank as a distinct species appearing to rest rather upon a beast’s anatomy than upon his outward appearance and manner of life. [Illustration: Dead grizzly] Having studied bears with some care and under favourable circumstances in more than one portion of the globe, I incline to the belief that the different species cross almost as freely as do different breeds of dogs; and certainly it seems probable that upon the North American continent all the different varieties owe their origin to the grizzly or the black, or to a union between the two. In this view I am supported by such a practical field naturalist and sportsman as Dr. Rainsford, as well as by a number of the best hunters and trappers whom I have met, and by certain very significant facts. Dr. Rainsford alludes to the first of these facts in his admirable article upon the Grizzly Bear in ‘The Big Game of North America.’ He says: ‘I myself have shot three young bears going with one sow, one almost yellow, one almost black, and another nearly grey. I have seen ordinary black bears, with year-old grizzly cubs, shaped differently from the mother, unmistakably owing both their shape and colour to the parentage of the male grizzly.’ This is the evidence of Dr. Rainsford, and I have heard similar statements as to the occurrence of different coloured cubs in the same litter, not once but a score of times, from Indians and white men who had passed their lives in the mountains; and I have round me in my house at the present moment a number of skins of bears killed by myself, which, if colour be any criterion as to species, represent almost as many species as there are skins.