There can be little doubt, then, that there were plenty of black bear in America in 1890 and 1891; and, in spite of the immense harvest of hides which is annually gathered in, I venture to prophesy that until Alaskan river bottoms and the dense timber districts of Vancouver Island, Oregon, and Washington Territory are cleared and ready for the plough, there will be plenty of bear left for those who care to look for them. Here on Vancouver Island and on the north-west coast of British Columbia black bears are especially plentiful, one of our great fur-dealers (Mr. Boscowitz) having taken in over 1,000 hides last year, whilst I see by a newspaper (‘Colonist,’ Dec. 6, 1892) that at Sumas in the New Westminster District (one of our best farming districts) seven bears have lately fallen to one rifle and three to another; and I am well convinced that a salmon-canning friend of mine told me the truth when he asserted that about dawn, one day during the great annual salmon run, he saw seventeen black bears at one _coup d’œil_, feeding along the bank of one of the northern rivers of British Columbia. But it must not be inferred from these facts that every tenderfoot who comes along will run up against bears the first time he goes in search of them. On the contrary, an old friend of mine (every inch an English sportsman) has been out in this country for twenty-five years, travelling from time to time all over the province, and has never yet seen a bear alive in the woods. The reason is simply that my friend uses a shot-gun, and doesn’t look for bears; and if you want to see these beasts you must look for them at the right time and in the right place, and even then be thankful if you see more than their fresh tracks, for Nature has given them noses as keen as the nose of a caribou, and ears which are always on the alert, as well as an impregnable sanctuary in the dense timber and tangled woodfall of their native forests. To those who live upon the Pacific coast the black bear is an animal to be thankful for, affording as he does an excuse for carrying a rifle when spring is in the woods; when the cedar swamps smell heavy with the musk of the skunk cabbage, and are lit in their green darkness by stray beams of May sunshine; when _Cormus Nuttalli_ is white with blooms as big as the palm of a man’s hand, and underfoot all is bright with the red and orange of columbine and ‘Indian pink,’ or white with the delicate petals of the dog violet. To me the black glossy hide beneath my feet always brings back memories of spring-time, either here on the island, or on the mainland by the Frazer, where the beautiful olalis are smothered in white blossom, and where the great yellow swallow-tails and plum-coloured Camberwell Beauties sail and sun themselves upon the stone slides round the lake.