SKELETON OF POLAR BEAR. 
offence, it is considered by the experienced Bear-hunters of Norway to be inferior in 
combat to the common Brown Bear, and is less dreaded by them as an antagonist. 
Its powers of endurance are necessarily great, for its means of subsistence are always 
precarious, and in many cases are extremely small indeed. As the Bear is in the habit 
of passing so much time upon the ice, and generally devours upon its frozen surface the 
prey which has been captured, it is liable to be affected by the sudden and extraordinary 
changes that are constantly taking place in the vast ice-fields of these cold regions. Pieces 
of ice on which the Bears are quietly sleeping after their repast, become noiselessly 
dissevered from the main body, and are carried off to sea for a very great distance before 
the Bear is aware of its enforced voyage. Scoresby records such an instance, where he 
met with a Polar Bear upon a piece of drift ice that was floating at sea some two hundred 
miles distant from the land. As the ice nourishes no animals that could afford nutriment 
to the white-coated resident, the Bear is forced to depend for its entire subsistence upon 
the fish that it may be able to capture. Out at sea, however, the fishy tribe are not so 
easily procured as near the shore, and the hunger-endurent powers of the Bear are 
thoroughly tested before it can again place its shaggy foot on the welcome soil. 
Owing to these marine excursions the Polar Bear is forced to pay unwilling visits to 
civilized shores which it loves not, and where it is obliged to fall upon the sheep and cattle 
of the residents in order to appease its hunger. The ire of the owners is greatly excited 
by the loss of their cattle, and the unfortunate Bear—a thief in spite of itsel{—is soon 
destroyed by the bereaved proprietors. Sometimes a whole party of Polar Bears is thus 
carried off, and for a while they inflict infinite damage on the country where they land. 
As the Nennook passes its life among the wintry regions of the north, its hybernation 
has been often discredited, and it has been said to make a partial migration southwards, 
so soon as the terrible frosts of the Arctic winter close up the pools whereto the seals and 
other animals which constitute its prey are in the habit of resorting. Other writers, again, 
assert that the Polar Bear ceases feeding in the winter, as do the other members of the 
same group, and that the young Nennooks are produced while the mother‘is safely housed 
in her den. There is a truth in both these opinions, for it is now ascertained that the 
female Polar Bear is in the habit of hybernating, but the male Nennook passes his winter 
in the active exercise of his faculties. 
The winter home of the Polar Bear is always made in some sheltered situation, such 
as the cleft of a rock, or the foot of a precipitous bank. In a very short time after the 
