122 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



Photo > J: U^. McLellan\ [Highbury 



POLAR BEAR 



This bear is the most formidable of all aquatic mammals. It is almost as much at home 



of his face smashed and lacerated. 

 He had an axe, but said, ' When 

 the bear sat up, my courage failed 

 me.' " 



THE MALAYAN SUN-BEAR. 



These small, smooth-coated 

 bears have a yellow throat-patch 

 like a mustard plaster, and are 

 altogether the most amusing 

 and comical of all the tribe. 

 They are almost as smooth as a 

 pointer dog, and are devoted to 

 all sweet substances which can 

 be a substitute for honey, their 

 main delicacy when wild. There 

 are always a number of these 

 bears at the Zoo incessantly 



in the -water as a seal begging for food. When one 



gets a piece of sugar, he cracks 



it into small pieces, sticks them on the back of his paw, and licks the mess until the paw is 

 covered with sticky syrup, which he eats with great gusto. This bear is found in the Malay 

 Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. It is only 4 feet high, or sometimes half a foot taller. It 

 is more in the habit of walking upright than any other species. 



THE POLAR BEAR. 



ICE-BEAR is the better name for this, the most interesting in its habits of all the bears. It is 

 an inhabitant of the lands of polar darkness and intense cold, and one of the very few land 

 animals which never try to avoid the terrible ordeal of the long Arctic night, which rolls on from 

 month to month. It can swim and dive nearly as well as a seal, climbs the icebergs, and goes 

 voyages on the drifting ice, floating hundreds of miles on the polar currents, and feeding on the 

 seals which surround it. Of the limits of size of the ice-bear it is impossible to speak with 

 certainty. v From the skins brought to this country the size of some of them must be enormous. 

 One which lived for more than thirty years at the Zoo was of immense length and bulk. When 

 the first discoverers went to the Arctic Seas, dressed in thick clothes and skins, the polar bears 

 took them for seals. On Bear Island, below Spitzbergen, a Dutch sailor sat down on the snow 

 to rest. A bear walked up behind him, and seized and crushed his head, evidently not in the 

 least aware of what kind of animal it had got hold of. When the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedi- 

 tion was wintering in Franz-Josef Land, the bears were a positive nuisance. They were not 

 afraid of man, and used to come round the huts at all hours. The men shot so many of them 

 that they formed a valuable article of food for the dogs. The flesh is said to be unwholesome 

 for men. The power of these bears in the water is wonderful ; though so bulky, they are as 

 light as a cork when swimming, and their strong, broad feet are first-class paddles. Whenever a 

 dead whale is found near the shore, the polar bears assemble to feed upon it. In the various 

 searches for the Franklin Expedition they pulled to pieces nearly all the cabins erected to hold 

 provisions for the sledge-parties. In one case it was found that the bears had amused themselves by 

 mounting the roof of a half-buried hut, and sliding down the snowy, frozen slope. Cubs are often 

 brought home in whaling- and sealing-ships, after the mothers have been shot. There is a ready 

 sale of them for the great menageries. Herr Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, by purchasing them 

 quite young, has induced bears to live on good terms with tigers, boar-hounds, and leopards. 



