452 COMMON BEAR. 



tree. The Bear will also catch and devour fish, 

 occasionally frequenting the banks of rivers for 

 that purpose. 



The Bear passes a considerable part of the winter 

 in a state of repose and abstinence; emerging only 

 at distant intervals from his den, and again con- 

 cealing himself in his retreat till the approach of 

 the vernal season. The females are said to con- 

 tinue in this state much longer than the males, 

 and it is during this period that they bring forth 

 their young, which are commonly two in num- 

 ber. These the ancients imagined to be nearly 

 shapeless masses, gradually licked and fashioned 

 into regular form by the parent; an opinion now 

 sufficiently exploded. On this subject the learned 

 Sir Thomas Brown has a chapter in his celebrated 

 work, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Er- 

 rors, and observes, that we have the testimony of 

 " three authentic philosophers," in confutation 

 of the notion, viz. first, of Matthiolus, who, in 

 his Comment on Dioscorides, affirms, that, in a 

 newly killed Bear which he saw opened, the young- 

 were distinct in all their limbs; secondly, of 

 Julius Scaliger, who affirms the same thing of one 

 killed by some hunters in the Alps; and, lastly, 

 of Aldrovandus, who informs us, that in the 

 Museum at Bologna there was, in his time, the 

 foetus of a Bear preserved in spirits, and which 

 was as completely formed as that of other animals. 

 The young, however, though not shapeless, have a 

 different aspect from the grown animal; the snou,t 

 being much sharper, and their colour yellowish : 



