MELURSUS "DIABOLICUS" 113 



only thing that could have averted a catastrophe would 

 have been a projectile of sufficient energy at once to over- 

 come, arrest, and throw back her energy of, say, 250 Ibs. 

 travelling at 25 miles per hour ; and it is not possible to 

 carry field artillery everywhere ! 



So far, we see, all the luck was on the side of the wild 

 beast ; but when she seized me the conditions were re- 

 versed. The bear caught me where I could best afford 

 it the big muscles in front of the thigh. 



Again, the precarious foothold saved me. Our impact 

 and my fall on her back upset the brute, and our sub- 

 sequent rapid descent of the rock-slope prevented her 

 from loosing her grip and seizing me again ; it would 

 doubtless have been my face and head then ! 



After that the tree ! 



Interposed, by a truly extraordinary piece of luck, in 

 the small of my back the only place to stop my whirling 

 descent it saved me doubly ; for had I possibly escaped 

 death by falling, the bear, finding me still with her, would 

 undoubtedly have polished me off in her own hideous 

 way. 



The melancholy forebodings of a " dot-and-carry-one " 

 action, and those horrid-looking boots with the ultra- 

 Parisian heels, were fortunately not realised ; and so won- 

 derful are the recuperative powers of the human frame 

 that the leg is almost as good as new. But the lesson has 

 been worth the learning. Bhlu may be a vegetarian : but 

 to presuppose a general mildness of temperament thereby 

 seems misguided, and hardly good enough. 



Most of the above account was written while still a 

 sufferer from the effects of the untimely meeting with 

 Melursus, with the events of that unlucky day still fresh 

 in the memory. The subject was therefore treated, perhaps, 

 more vividly than would have been the case after a lapse 

 of time ; and the writer, undesirous of causing offence to 

 I 



