2-889-493 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Grisly Bears, in the Gardens of the Zoological Society, Regent's Park, 1850. '...a hunting party who had gone up into the Sierra Nevada, about 800 miles from San Francisco, tracked an enormous Grisly Bear to her lair, in a chasm of the rock, and succeeded in shooting her. Her weight, when dead, was estimated at 1900 lb., and her skin proved to be one of the finest ever taken in that country. Upon searching her lair, three young cubs were discovered, so young, indeed, that they could scarcely see. These fell to the lot of Mr. Pacton, who fills the office of Judge in one of the gold districts, and were by him carried down to San Francisco, and thence by way of Chagres and Panama, by steamer, to this country'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.