CAVE LODGERS. 199 



hauling off the covers with superincumbent ornaments, 

 and tearing sofa covers, until I was fain to end the 

 scene by securing the young urchin. But I got such 

 a bite through my trowsers that I never again admitted 

 him indoors. I never saw such a little demon ; when 

 fed with a bowl of Indian meal porridge, he would bite 

 the rim of the bowl in his rage, growling frantically, and 

 then plunge his head into the mixture, the groans and 

 growls still coming up in bubbles to the surface, whilst 

 he swallowed it like a starved pig. I afterwards gave 

 him to a brother officer going to England, and whether 

 (as is the usual fate of bears in captivity) he after- 

 wards killed a child, and met a felon's death, I never 

 heard. 



The growth of bears is very slow ; they do not reach 

 their full size for four years from their birth. 



On entering his den for hybernation the bear is in 

 prime order; the fat pervades his carcase in exactly the 

 same manner as in the case of the pig, the great bulk of 

 it lying, as in the flitch, along the back and on either 

 side ; this generally attains a thickness of four inches, 

 though in domesticated specimens, fed purposely by North 

 American hairdressers, it has reached a thickness of eight 

 inches. It is by the absorption of this fat throughout 

 the long fast of four months that the bear is enabled to 

 exist. Of course evaporation is almost at a stand-still, 

 and a plug, called by the Norwegians the " tappen," is 

 formed in the rectum, and retained until the spring. 

 Should this be lost prematurely, it is said that the animal 

 immediately becomes emaciated. 



A large bear at the end of the fall will weigh five and 

 even six hundred pounds ; this has been increased in 



