13° 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



or heifer that strays from the herd, and striking it to 

 the ground with a blow of its heavy paws, or clinging 

 to its throat till it falls exhausted from loss of blood. 

 The cattle, however, not unfrequently begin the attack, 

 and receive the death-blow by rushing, with a loud 

 bellow, upon the enemy whom one of them has 

 chanced suddenly to espy. 



The prodigious strength popularly ascribed to the 

 bear is scarcely exaggerated ; in reference to this, 

 bear's sinew formed a constituent of the chain or cord 

 by which the terrible Fenri wolf of Norse mythology 

 was sought to be bound ; and the Swedish proverb 

 which asserts that Nalle (Bruin) does not smite with a 

 twig, is true indeed. For with one blow of its massive 

 club — its fore-paw — it can strike a heifer to the 

 ground ; and, a bear, walking upright, has been 

 known to carry a horse in his fore-paws across a 

 timber-log placed over a rushing stream. The north- 

 ern horse is not however so large as our own. In 

 attacking animals it rears on its hind legs and striking 

 with its chief weapons send their terrible claws deep 

 into the llesh ; but against man it more rarely assumes 

 this position ; creeping towards him, more usually, 

 on all fours, as if awed by his glance, and making 

 use of its teeth. When it would make prey of a 

 horse, encountered on open ground, it usually fixes 

 the claws of one paw in the horse's neck or breast, 

 and allows itself to be dragged away till it can seize 

 a tree to hold by with the other, or till the exhausted 

 animal succumbs. 



The bear has a good appetite ; in the course of a 

 day and night he can eat the most of a young heifer, 

 beginning his repast even before the victim is quite 

 dead. After satisfying his hunger he either buries 

 the remainder of the meal or leaves it on the spot and 

 returns soon. ■ He will not, Pontoppidan states, like 

 the sneaking wolf, feed on any dead carcase he chances 

 to meet with, but likes meat of his killing, nice and 

 fresh. Inwards, especially the kidneys, he seems to 

 relish most ; cow's-udder too is one of his choice bits, 

 and it has often happened that a cow has come home 

 to the seater in the evening with her udder torn off. 

 Now and then, when it can surprise the vigilance of 

 the wild reindeer it indulges in venison ; and on the 

 other hand, though not partial to fast-days, 



"The grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the forest," 

 partakes, for a change, when he can get it, of a dinner 

 offish. Sometimes he becomes unusually exorbitant 

 in his demands ; savage and surly beyond his wont. 

 A peasant of Transtrand, the northernmost part of 

 the wild province of West Dalecarlia, informed the 

 present writer that in 1 850 a monstrous bear infested 

 the neighbourhood ; tearing the roofs from byres and 

 making sad havoc with the cattle within. Nor were 

 the attempts to get rid of this violent marauder at all 

 successful, till a peasant at length caught him red- 

 handed, and having no weapon more effective than 

 his tongue, conjured him with these awesome words : 

 " If thou contest to me, thou Satan, I will dash thee 



against the wall ;" whereupon the terror-stricken 

 brute "no Christian bear" hurried away, and was 

 not seen or heard of in the neighbourhood again. 

 When a bear thus breaks into a cattle-shed, after 

 slaughtering what he deems sufficient, if undisturbed, 

 he always returns the same way, dragging with him, 

 usually, a portion or the whole of his victim. 



The bear, if let alone, is not greatly dangerous to 

 man ; who, under ordinary circumstances, may gener- 

 ally pass within view of him in the forest without 

 serious occasion for alarm. But such an interview, 

 during summer at least, is not often obtained ; for 

 the bear's acute senses — his quick hearing, sight, and 

 scent give him timely notice of human approach, and 

 he usually keeps out of the way. Even when wounded 

 by the hunter's shot he more frequently flies than 

 hazards a close fight. If, however, on such occasions, 

 the bear does turn upon his foe, the hunter has the 

 utmost need of cool nerve and a sure aim, or of a 

 sharp weapon, wielded by a strong arm. Such en- 

 counters are most frequent with she-bears whose 

 young have been shot or taken ; but there are old, 

 experienced he-bears also equally ready for a passage 

 of arms. Heavy and clumsy as the bear appears 

 when tamed, it is agile enough in the wild state \ 

 running more quickly than any man, and clambering 

 up trees with facility, though it descends them, rear 

 foremost, with great caution. It can swim with speed, 

 but not very enduringly ; its thick, shaggy, absorbing 

 coat being necessarily an encumbrance in the water. 



The bear, like the jettes, a giant brood of old saga, 

 retreats before advancing cultivation, but is yet toler- 

 ably numerous in the more northerly parts of Sweden, 

 where continuous forests cover hundreds of square 

 miles ; especially in the wilder parts of Wermland, 

 Dalecarlia, and that vast, most northern, division of 

 the kingdom called Norrland, which includes LaplancL 

 When in Norra, Finskogen, Wermland, a few years 

 since, the writer heard of a peasant hunter there who 

 during one winter had shot ten bears in the forest 

 tract. They are still more frequent in Norway, being 

 found to some extent all over the country, right up to 

 the Russian frontier ; though very rarely and inci- 

 dentally in the southern lowlands, and not very 

 numerously in Finmaiken, the northern extreme of 

 the land, corresponding with the Swedish Lappmark,. 

 or Lapland. The forest and hill tracts of Thelemark, 

 the whole province of Throndhjem, Osterdalen, and 

 Norrland, the most northerly province except Fin- 

 marken, are the localities in which he is now most 

 extensively found. His favourite haunts are desert 

 regions where pine-forested hills interchange with 

 cloven rocks, wide stretches of moss, and mire, and 

 grassy, herbaceous plots. From these elevated soli- 

 tudes the northern king of beasts often takes a tour of 

 longer or shorter duration over the open tracts of the 

 higher mountains ; but his proper domains are the 

 dusky pine forests that stretch wide over the sub- 

 ordinate hills. 



