rush of the great bear--doubtless made with the ferocity and speed which
so often belie the seeming awkwardness of the animal--bore down the
startled victim, taken utterly unawares before it had a chance to defend
itself. In one case the bear had missed its spring; the moose going
off, for a few rods, with huge jumps, and then settling down into its
characteristic trot. The old hunter who followed the tracks said he
would never have deemed it possible for any animal to make such strides
while in a trot.

Nevertheless, the grisly is only occasionally, not normally, a
formidable predatory beast, a killer of cattle and of large game.
Although capable of far swifter movement than is promised by his frame
of seemingly clumsy strength, and in spite of his power of charging with
astonishing suddenness and speed, he yet lacks altogether the supple
agility of such finished destroyers as the cougar and the wolf; and for
the absence of this agility no amount of mere huge muscle can atone. He
is more apt to feast on animals which have met their death by accident,
or which have been killed by other beasts or by man, than to do his own
killing. He is a very foul feeder, with a strong relish for carrion,
and possesses a grewsome and cannibal fondness for the flesh of his own
kind; a bear carcass will toll a brother bear to the ambushed hunter
better than almost any other bait, unless it is the carcass of a horse.

Nor do these big bears always content themselves merely with the
carcasses of their brethren. A black bear would have a poor chance if
in the clutches of a large, hungry grisly; and an old male will kill
and eat a cub, especially if he finds it at a disadvantage. A rather
remarkable instance of this occurred in the Yellowstone National Park,
in the spring of 1891. The incident is related in the following letter
written to Mr. William Hallett Phillips, of Washington, by another