BRA 



B E A 



offensive if not meddled with, they are very fierce when 

 provol 



The Esquimnux account of the hybernation of this l\ 

 is tliu^ rrl.iti 1 l>y Captain l.yon : ' From Ooyarrakhioo, a 

 man. 1 obtained in account of the bear, 

 :v-img to be passed over. 



A 'in-lit of winter, the pregnant she-bears 



are very tat, and always solitary. When a heavy fall of 

 snow sets in. the animal seeks some hollow place in which 

 she can lie down, and then remains quiet while the snow 

 n her. Sometimes she will wait until a quantity of 

 snow has fallen, and then digs herself a cave : at all < 

 it seems necessary that she should be covered by and lie 

 amongst snow. She now goes to sleep, and docs not wake 

 until the springsun is pretty high, when she brings forth 

 her two cubs. The cave, by this time, has become much 

 larger, by the effect of the animal's warmth and breath, so 

 that the cubs have room enough to move, and they acquire 

 considerable strength by continually sucking. The dam at 

 ill becomes so thin and weak, that it is with great dilli- 

 she extricates herself, when the sun is powerful enough 

 to throw a strong glare through the snow which roofs the 

 ileu. The Esquimaux affirm, that during this long confine- 

 ment the bear has no evacuations, and is herself the means 

 of preventing them by stopping all the natural passages 

 with moss, grass, or earth. ( See nntc on the bear's tapptn.) 

 The natives find and kill the bears during their confine- 

 ment by means of dogs, which scent them through the 

 snow, and begin scratching and howling very eagerly. As 

 it would be unsafe to make a large opening, a long trench 

 is cut, of sufficient width to enable a man to look down, and 

 see where the bear's head lies, and he then selects a mortal 

 part into which he thrusts his spear. The old one being 

 killed, the hole is broken open, and the young cubs may be 

 taken out by hand, as, having tasted no blood, and never 

 having been at liberty, they are then very harmless and 

 quiet. Females which are not pregnant roaai throughout 

 the whole winter in the- same manner ae the males. The 

 coupling time is in May.' 



That part of these accounts which relates to the non- 

 hybernation of some of these bears is corroborated by Cap- 

 tain Parry, who saw them roaming in the course of the two 

 winters which he passed on the coast of Melville Peninsula. 



That the Polar bear will subsist on vegetable diet was 

 proved in the case of twe which lived and throve for years 

 in the Fre.ncli menagerie without being allowed to touch 

 animal food. The individual kept in the Tower in the 

 reign of Henry III. seems to have been indulged indict 

 and recreation more congenial to its habits, for there arc 

 two of the king's writs extant in choice Latin, directing the 

 sheriff's of London to furnish four- pence a day for 'our 

 white bear in our Tower of London, and his keeper,' and to 

 provide a muzzle mid iron-chain to hold him when out of 

 the water, and a long and strong rope to hold him when he 

 is fulling in the Thames.* 



FOSSIL BEARS. 



The fossil remains of these animals, when first found, 

 ministered, as might have been expected from the spirit of 

 the :i !.-, of the marvellous, 



and figured in l -riptions nf the time. The 



caverns of th'- in iirMwurbood of the FTartz were ransacked 

 for them ; and i . irtue as i; nndor 



the title of fossil I'nirnrns' Bones, procured a ready sale. 

 In tl Lit/., there is a figure of one of 



these foil unicorns, the product of an imagination suili 



But it was not till the year 1C72, as Cuvier observes, that 



any notice, truly osteological, appeared on i : . w h'-n 



i gave some representations of their bones brought 



from a cave of the Carpathians, as those of dragons ; and, 



by way of helping the evidence, informed his readers that 



wore still to be found in Transylvania dragons alive 



1 ing. 



n m Mok evrkhi., tlut w mlijoin tUa given by Timlin 



mitiliiu tandonfo lul.-m. rrirri|, hum ,>,!,, ciuo.1 nnd.im 

 Duo wtr. Albo ,, teuttmut UM) u Turrtm uaMrum Ix.nrionix il.Uh-i. 

 tMlrDdiun, rl fMUtom ifMlm tiufuli tlirbu* quamdiu fucriut ibulrm. h- 

 dmutoi <1 luilrDlnlionrra mam.' 



brrr f.-i.iii< .(".,!,. r 



Rra VicKoBltibw 

 AW IM .trt. 



. 



nimi. Vnrct|.iniiu *<*>li 

 ft.it .,!. ' 



nnnd 



. m 



nu.lr> London!*, lubrrr bruin un.im muM-llum n mmm rMlirnnra f.-m-am. 

 *A 11-i.raihim t'r.nra ilium nlrm v|ium. f. uium loiiifam .-i 



curopuUbttur, r. 



These were the remains of the extinct bear of the 

 (Ursui tijflteut), iin minimi which im^t have a 

 a large ho: . some of whose bones are L'lven by 



:i'tinn Hfs y.tiolithft ft dt Carernft 

 dins If Margrarint ilf Harruth (I 77 I). Kosemniillcr, in 

 1791 and I79S, ga\e the figure of a rrnnium from 

 lenreuth : and John Hunter, in the Philotnpliicul Trantae- 

 linn* (1791), described the bones found then- : and the 

 Margrave of Anspach the caves. In l-oi Ki'semmiller 

 again returned to the subject 



The amount of information had now arrived to such a 

 point, that Blumenbach distinguished the sluills found in 

 the caverns as those of two distinct species, and gave them 

 severally the names of Urnu tpelteus and L'rsus arcloidru*, 

 which Cuvier adopted, expressing, however, his opinion 

 that they were only varieties of the same sp< 



Without entering largely into a detail of all the caverns 

 where these remains were found, it may be as well shortly 

 to notice some of the different districts where they occur. 

 Those in the neighbourhood of the Hartz furnished tii. 

 unicorns' bones above alluded to. The princip.il of ihese are 

 those of Scharzfeld and Baumann, the hitter of which owes 

 its name (Baumanns Hohle) to a wretched miner, who, in 

 1670, lured by the hope of finding ore, sought its recesses. 

 There he wandered, alone and in darkness, three days and 

 three nights. At length he found his way out, but in so 

 exhausted a condition, that he only returned to the light 

 of day to die. 



The caverns of the Carpathians supplied the dragons' 

 bones above mentioned. 



In Franconia, near Muggendorf, the caves are numerous 

 and abound in bones. Here are the caverns of G. 

 rcuth, Rabenstein, Kuhloch, &c. 



The south-west border of the Tliuringenvald has those of 

 Gliicksbrnnn and Leibenstein, near Memungen, and V 

 phalia those of K'.iiterhohle and Sundwick. 



In these caves, it appears, - generations of 



now swept from the face- of the earth alwolutely 

 extinct as species were born, lived, and died, for a 

 long series of years. Roscnmiillcr, Hunter, Blnmenbach, 

 Cu\ier, and Buckland, all agree in this point. The firM of 

 these found bones of a bear so young. Ih.it its death mu>t 

 have almost immediately followed its birth, anil other re- 

 mains of individuals which must have died in their y.uith. 

 It would be out of place here to give an account of the 

 remains of the other animals, many of them -,\\<n extinct, 

 found in the same places; but it is aurceil i.n all sides, that 

 rtie proportion of bears, in relation to the others, must 

 been great. Bnckland (Keliquiee Diluriante) thu- 

 pressively describes the scene in the cavern of Kiihlorh. 

 ' It is literally true, that in this single cavern (the si/e and 

 proportions of which are nearly equal to those of the into 

 nor of a large church) there arc hundreds of cart loads of 

 blapk animal dust, entirely covering the whole floor, to a 

 depth which, if we multiply this depth by the length and 

 breadth of the cavern, will be found i 

 teet. The wh^le of this mass has been again and 

 dug over in search of teeth and bones, which it still con; 

 abundantly, though in broken fragments. The sta> 

 these is very different from that of the bones we find in any 

 of the other caverns, Wiing of a black, or, more properly 

 speaking, dark umber colour Uuvogfcout, and many of 

 them readily crumbling under tbe toger into a soft (lark 

 powder, resembling mummy powder, and being of the same 

 nature with the black ear* in whick they are ; 

 The quantity of ramat matter accnmubud OB tW floor 



is the mo* surprising *n* the ly thing . 1 ever 



witnessed; and many rrundred, 1 nay say thousand, 

 in.liudnals must have contributed their remains' to make up 

 tlris appaHing moss of the dust of death, it rooms, in great 

 part, to be dernwd from comminuted and pulverised < 

 forthefleaky pnts of animal bodies produce, by their de- 

 cow^osnion. mil a quantity at permanent earthy resi- 

 duum, that we out* *eek far AM origin of thu MM p; 



i* decay** haMt. T* owe is s *y, ttwt the Wack 

 oartfe lies in (fee state T IMM jxrwdur, and rises in <!n,t 

 under the feet.- it ate retains e large proportion of its 

 original nawal , that it M occasionally used 1 



MMats a* MchiiMf -m aawc Car the adjacent meadow*.' 



'he fotUw^isnMedtytheftofeewjrin 11 i' ! : ! bava 

 stated, Th th total quantity f WBMal matter that lies 

 within this cavern cannot be computed at less than 5000 

 cubic feet ; now allowing two cubic feet of dust and bouts 



