THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 181 



that bear again. Probably he laughed himself to 

 death. 



The blackbear is undoubtedly leather-lined, for 

 he will dig up and eat the bulbs of the jack-in-the- 

 pulpit, which affect a human tongue — I speak from 

 knowledge — like a mixture of nitric acid and 

 powdered glass. Moreover, he is the only animal 

 which can swallow the tight-rolled green cigars of 

 the skunk-cabbage in the early spring. An entry in 

 my nature-notes reads as follows : — 



"Only a fool or a bear would taste skunk-cabbage." 



My lips were blistered and my tongue swollen 

 when I wrote it. The fact that the blackbear and the 

 blackcat or fisher are the only two mammals which 

 can eat Old Man Quill-Pig, alias porcupine, and 

 swallow his quills, confirms my belief as to the bear's 

 lining. The dog, the lynx, the wild cat, and the 

 wolf have all tried — and died. 



Last spring, in northern Pennsylvania I found 

 myself on the top of a mountain, by the side of one 

 of those trembling bogs locally known as bear- 

 sloughs. There I had highly resolved to find the nest 

 of a nearby Nashville warbler, which kept singing its 

 song, which begins like a black-and-white warbler 

 and ends like a chipping sparrow. I did not suppose 

 that there was a bear within fifty miles of me. 

 Suddenly I came upon a large, quaking-aspen tree 

 set back in the woods by the side of the bog. Its 

 smooth bark was furrowed by a score of deep scratches 

 and ridges about five feet from the ground, while 

 above them the tree had apparently been repeatedly 



