the first time; and you must follow a long 

 while before you find out why. Now it is a 

 bear and her cubs I watched three of them 

 for an hour or more, one afternoon, as they 

 gathered blueberries. At first they champed 

 them from the bushes, stems, leaves and all, 

 just as they grew. Again, when they found 

 a good bush, a little one with lots of berries, 

 they would bite it off close to the ground, or 

 tear it up by the roots, and then taking it by 

 the stem with both paws would pull it through 

 their mouths from one side to the other, strip- 

 ping off every berry and throwing the use- 

 less bush away. Again they would strike 

 the bushes with their paws, knocking off a 

 shower of the ripest berries, and then scrape 

 them all together very carefully into a pile 

 and gobble them down at a single mouthful. 

 And whenever, in wandering about after a 

 good bush, one of the cubs spied the other 

 busy at an unusually good find, it gave one 

 a curious remembrance of his ow r n boyhood 

 to see the little fellow rush up whim- 

 pering to get his share before all the 

 bushes should be stripped clean. 



275 



ItJithoufa Gun 



