During summer I have seen him on the edge of snowfields and glaciers consuming thousands of unfortunate grasshoppers, flies, and other insects there accumulated. He is particularly fond of ants--tears ant hills to pieces and licks up the ants as they come storming forth to bite him. He tears hundreds of rotten logs and stumps to pieces for grubs, ants and their eggs. He freely eats honey, the bees and their nests. He often amuses himself and makes a most amusing and man-like spectacle by chasing and catching grasshoppers. In a fish country he searches for fish and occasionally catches live ones; but he is too restless or shiftless to be a good fisherman. I have seen him catch fish by thrusting his nose in root entanglements in the edge of a brook; sometimes he captures salmon or trout that are struggling through shallow ripples. Occasionally he catches a rabbit or a bird. But most of his meat is stale, with the killing of which he had nothing to do. He will devour carrion that has the accumulated smell of weeks of corruption. He catches more mice than a cat; and in the realm of economic biology he should be rated as useful. He consumes many other pests. The black bear is--or was--pretty well distributed over North America. His colour and activities vary somewhat with the locality, this being due perhaps to a difference of climate and food supply. Everywhere, however, he is very much the same. Wherever found he has the hibernating habit. This is most developed in the colder localities. Commonly he is fat at the close of autumn; and as a preliminary to his long winter rest he makes a temporary nest where for a few days he fasts and sleeps. With his stomach completely empty he retires into hibernating quarters for the winter. This place may be dug beneath the base of a fallen tree, close to the upturned roots, or a rude cave between immense rocks, or a den beneath a brush heap. Sometimes he sleeps on the bare earth or on the rocks of a cave; but he commonly claws into his den a quantity of litter or trash, then crawls into this and goes to sleep. The time of his retiring for the winter varies with the latitude; but usually all bears of the same locality retire at about the same date, early December being the most common time. The grizzly bear is more particular in his choice of sleeping quarters and desires better protection and concealment than the black bear. Bears sometimes come forth in fair weather for a few hours and possibly for a few days. I have known them to come out briefly in mid-winter. With the coming of spring--anywhere between the first of March and the middle of May--the bears emerge, the males commonly two weeks or more earlier than the females. Usually they at once journey down the mountain. They eat little or nothing for the first few days. They are likely to break their fast with the tender shoots of willow, grass, and sprouting roots, or a bite of bark from a pine.