A BLACK BEAR HUNT 



181 



it is true, yet strong and agile, to draw out fish in the warm shallows 

 with his great hairy paws, or break up decayed tree-stumps and 

 feed on swarming colonies of black ants, or otherwise forage for 

 a living. 



By no means the least of Nature's many mysteries is this 

 marvellous hibernating habit. Birds have learned to evade the 

 severities of winter by migrating to sunny climes ; the bear has 

 discovered a different method of surviving when the wilderness 

 fruits are exhausted, and the ground, rigid with frosts, is wrapped 

 about his favourite roots. Instead of starving he sleeps, and 

 that on a scale only usual in fairy tales. The fires of life are 

 banked and all the vital processes almost at a standstill. A coma- 

 tose condition is certainly the first stage of starvation, and may 

 have been in the first instance established by the impossibility 

 of obtaining suitable food in winter time ; for it is well known 

 that bears in warm countries have not acquired this habit, as 

 they can secure their usual food without interruption. When 

 going into winter quarters they have been said sometimes in time 

 of snow to adopt a trick equivalent to the highwayman's noted 

 ruse of reversing the shoes of his horse, walking backwards for 

 a long distance towards their dens. This, however, requires 

 verification, for it implies a higher degree of intelligence in the 

 animal than the writer has been able to discover. 



TWO VICTIMS. 



