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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



seized one of her flock, and had quietly devoured its 

 head and part of the body, when some men arriving 

 drove him off, and shared the remainder of his meal. 



The same pastor also related that during the preced- 

 ing autumn, a bear, on receiving a shot which only 

 slightly wounded him, had rushed furiously at the 

 hunter, and rearing upon his hind legs grasped him 

 in his fore-paws and carried him about two hundred 

 feet, during which transit the man's toes only here 

 and there touched the ground. The bear then laid 

 his burden down, and as the man held his breath and 

 feigned to be dead, his adversary presently left him 

 with an angry growl. The hunter had sustained no 

 injury beyond a superficial bite in the arm, and was 

 soon ready to renew the pursuit. Some years before 

 another Transtrand hunter had a close fight with a 

 bear ; the two combatants having for a while hold of 



Fig. 169. — The Brown Bear (Ursus arctos). 



the opposite ends of a gun, but at length the bear 

 was defeated, with the loss of his life. A militiaman, 

 as recorded by Berlin, did not escape so scathless 

 from his contest with a bear. Contrary to orders he 

 had taken his musket with him to a hunt in which 

 several joined ; and as it happened the bear rushed 

 towards the spot where he stood, at a distance from 

 the rest of the party. The man attempted to fire, 

 but the priming was wet, and the musket having no 

 bayonet attached proved inadequate to repel the onset 

 of the bear, which struck him to the ground. There 

 he lay, holding his breath, and the bear, after several 

 investigating sniffs, believed him dead, but sought 

 revenge also on the musket. The soldier, thereupon, 

 being anxious to save his weapon from injury, made a 

 movement, but was instantly bit behind the head, so 

 that the scalp was drawn quite over his face. He 

 then again feigned death ; whereupon the bear lay 

 down alongside him, but other hunters arriving, the 

 bear was presently despatched. The rescued prisoner 

 eventually recovered from his wounds. 



Man is not quite the sole subjugator of the bear; 

 the marauding savage sometimes receives a death- 

 blow where he only expected to dine. A Trondhjem 



newspaper records that during the summer of 1872, 

 two bears came upon a herd that was grazing at a 

 seater, in the parish of Flaa ; but just at the moment 

 when one of the brutes rose to seize a heifer that 

 stood somewhat apart from the other cattle, a two- 

 years' ox suddenly started from the herd, rushed with 

 an awful bellow at the bear, and with one thrust 

 gored him to death — ripping him open from the 

 stomach to the neck, so that a portion of the intestines 

 hung out. A young herd-boy, who had witnessed 

 the fray, hastily collected the cattle and drove them 

 to the seater-hut, where he related the adventure to 

 the dairymaid ; adding that though the bear had 

 received a death-wound, its head was still alive. 

 When the woman had counted her cattle and secured 

 them in the shed, she armed herself with an axe and 

 a staff, and bidding the lad follow with a large knife, 

 went in quest of the bears. They found the wounded 

 bear lying dead ; but the other had departed, having 

 first, however, almost completely covered his un- 

 fortunate companion with moss. The dairymaid, 

 who was sixty years of age, and had spent thirty-five 

 summers at the seaters, then stripped bruin of his 

 shaggy coat. Perhaps it would serve to keep her 

 warm at nights in her old age ; or perhaps be pre- 

 sented to the church to comfort the pastor's toes in 

 the pulpit on cold Sunday mornings ; a use to which 

 bears' skins are yet applied in Scandinavia, as they 

 were three hundred years ago, when Olaus Magnus, 

 Archbishop of Upsala, wrote his venerable history of 

 the Goths, Vandals, and Swedes. 



In exposing the rapacity of bruin we must not 

 forget that he is a king, with certain divine rights 

 within his forest domain, and therefore not without 

 excuse in doing occasionally with tooth and nail what 

 the lords of creation do daily with knife and fork. 

 He has also in common with those lords, besides 

 rapacious tendencies and herbivorous-carnivorous 

 appetite, a trace of good-nature hid beneath his 

 heavy, demure, and solid aspect. We have already 

 given some proof of this assertion, and as it is but 

 fair to look fully on both sides of a character, and to 

 give even the blackest of bears his due, we conclude 

 with an incident that shows bruin to be, sometimes 

 at least, better behaved, and even more humane, 

 than his neighbour, man. The account is derived 

 from the "Falun Tidninger" for February 1865. 



It is customary for the Laplanders with their 

 reindeer to remove, every autumn, from their summer 

 haunts on the mountains to the lower lands adjacent 

 to the coast ; where less snow falls, and better 

 pasturage is found for the herds. Thus, a few years 

 since, several Lapp families had descended with their 

 peculiar breed of long-horns from the Sorsele fjelds, 

 and pitched their tents on the uppermost forest- 

 pastures in the parish of Burtrack. Within this tract 

 a bear had fondly hoped to pass his winter days in 

 peace and quietness ; and had indeed for awhile en- 

 joyed repose in his lair under a bosky hill. Then 



