34 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHA*. 



her relations, and resented the restraint that they put upon 

 her, for she loved to wander away into the trackless forest. 

 Once when she returned from one of these excursions she 

 told the following incident. " As I was riding to-day along 

 a narrow path a great black hog came out of the woods 

 and stopped before me. I never saw such an impudent 

 black hog before. It stood up on its hind feet and grinned 

 and gnashed its teeth at me. I could not make the horse 

 go on. I told him he was a fool to be frightened at a hog, 

 and tried to whip him past, but he would not go, and 

 wanted to turn back. I told the hog to get out of the way, 

 but he did not mind me. ' Well,' said I, ' if you won't for 

 words, I'll try blows ; ' so I got off and took a stick and 

 walked up toward it. When I got pretty close by, it got' 

 down on all fours and walked away slowly and sullenly 

 stopping every few steps, and looking back and grinning 

 and growling. Then I got on my horse and rode on." The 

 impudent black hog was an American black bear. 



The black bear would seem to be fonder of animal food 

 than his brown cousin in Europe ; but all bears will eat, at 

 any rate occasionally, both kinds of food, most of them 

 giving the preference to a vegetarian diet, while the grizzly 

 and the Polar bear are mainly carnivorous. Their teeth 

 are of the crushing type, and fitted for a mixed diet, and 

 thus differ from the purely cutting or shearing teeth of the 

 cats. They cannot, however, freely roll the lower jaw 

 from side to side, so as to grind the food ; and there 

 does not seem to be a marked difference in the teeth of the 

 relatively carnivorous and the more fully vegetarian kinds. 

 There is more difference in their dispositions, the flesh- 

 eaters being more savage and courageous. Curiously 

 enough the Polar bears at the Clifton Zoo seem to be 

 especially fond of cocoa-nuts a kind of food to which they 

 can scarcely be accustomed among the ice-floes of the 



