Among inferior furs I may include that very respectable animal, the black bear, reported by Cook “in great numbers,” and “of a shining black color.”[158] The grizzly bear is less frequent, and is inferior in quality of fur to all other varieties of the bear. The brown bear is supposed to be a variety of the black bear. The polar bear, which at times is a formidable animal, leaving a footprint in the snow nine inches long, was once said not to make an appearance west of the Mackenzie River; but he has been latterly found on Behring Strait, so that he, too, is included among our new population. The black bear, in himself a whole population, inhabits every wooded district from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Carolina to the ice of the Arctic, being more numerous inland than on the coast. Langsdorff early remarked that he did not appear on the Aleutians, but on the continent, about Cook’s Inlet and Prince William Sound, which are well wooded.[159] He has been found even on the Isthmus of Panama. Next to the dog, he is the most cosmopolitan and perhaps the most intelligent of animals, and among those of the forest he is the most known, even to the nursery. His showy fur once enjoyed great vogue in hammer-cloths and muffs, and it is still used in military caps and pistol-holsters; so that he is sometimes called the Army bear. Latterly the fur has fallen in value. Once it brought in London from twenty to forty guineas. It will now hardly bring more than the same number of shillings. The beaver, amphibious and intelligent, has a considerable place in commerce, and also a notoriety of its own as the familiar synonym for the common covering of a man’s head; and here the animal becomes historic. By royal proclamation, in 1638, Charles the First of England commanded “that no beaver-makers whatsoever, from henceforth, shall make any hats or caps but of pure beaver.”[160] This proclamation was the death-warrant of beavers innumerable, sacrificed to the demands of the trade. Wherever they existed over a wide extent of country, in the shelter of forests or in lodges built by their extraordinary instinct, they were pursued and arrested in their busy work. The importation of their skins into Europe during the last century was enormous, and it continued until one year it is said to have reached the unaccountable number of 600,000. I give these figures as I find them. Latterly other materials have been obtained for hats, so that this fur has become less valuable. But the animal is still hunted. A medicine supplied by him, and known as the castoreum, has a fixed place in the Materia Medica.