40 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[Februaey 1, 1897 



Mr. Lydekker, indeed, in his excellent " Geographical Dis- 

 tribution of Mammals,' only enumerates four others." 

 Why the beast should have selected so desolate a country 

 for its habitat is curious, seeing that it is a powerful 

 creature, fully capable of holding its own in more favoured 

 climates ; its range can be hardly comparable to that 

 of the Bronze Age man, driven to the uttermost corners 

 of Europe by invading iron-smelting races. Yet it 

 seems to be the fact that its range has been curtailed, 

 for a skull referable to the existing I'rsiu maritimns 

 has been found in the diluvium near Hamburg, thus 

 proving incontestably a former extension to the southward, 

 though it is, of course, highly possible that at the same 

 time ice and snow were also more extended in the same 

 dkection. Many naturalists will put this down to the ! 

 whiteness of its fur. At first sight this does not appear an 

 obvious kind of correlation. Yet in a country where all is 

 white a harmony of tint has its uses. Though the Polar 

 bear is large and powerful, it is not overweighted with 

 brain ; a gigantic frame is not always accompanied by 

 development of brain in due proportion. Why, then, as an 

 old writer poetically put it, does the Polar bear " sway his 

 rude sceptre over the icy mountains of Greenland and 

 Spitzbergen " ? It is possible — at any rate, it has often 

 been asserted — that the whiteness of the Polar bear is an 

 advantage, not, indeed, in escaping its foes — though they 

 are limited to those of its own household — but in stealing 

 quietly and unobserved upon its prey. It might be that in ■ 

 milder climes the bear was at a positive disadvantage in ' 

 this respect, and that, in consequence, it gradually retired 

 to the fastnesses of the extreme North. But a white skin 1 

 has other uses than those in a cold climate. It helps to 

 keep the body warm, in that it prevents the giving off of i 

 heat more than would a skin of any other colour. We can i 

 see, therefore, a fitness in the colour of the Polar bear. [ 

 And yet this popular and apparently reasonable explanation 

 of the bear's hide is not without its opponents. " It seems 

 hardly right," wrote Sir Leopold M'Clintock in " The 

 Voyage of the Fux, " " to call Polar bears land animals." 

 And those who have seen j\Ir. Swan's fine picture of the 

 bears swimming in the Polar sea will remember how 

 exceedingly conspicuous the painter has, doubtless with 

 reason, made them to look amid their surroundings. Then, 

 too, the bear often acquires, with advancing years, a brown 

 colour, quite noticeable in the old bear at the "Zoo," 

 of whose creditable longevity we have already made men- 

 tion. So much so, indeed, that whale himters from 

 Scotland frequently speak of this dreaded beast by the 

 flippant name of " Old Brownie." The brownness of our 

 specimen at the " Zoo" was wrongly put down by some to 

 the sooty atmosphere of this city. Again, according to 

 the same authority who has just been quoted, the Polar 

 bear seems to prefer hunting by night ; and in darkness it 

 might be any colour with equal advantage, or still any 

 colour if moonlight and starlight threw strong shadows. 

 It caimot, in fact, be assumed offhand that the whiteness 

 of the bear's pellage has any definite relation to the ice 

 and snow amongst which it lives. Like many of the in- 

 habitants of the North — such as, for mstance, the notorious 

 lemming — the Polar bear is a great traveller ; but, unlike 

 that restless rodent, it does not deliberately voyage : its 

 journeys are to a large extent involuntary, and are due to 

 the breaking off of bits of ice upon which the bear 

 happens to be. It is thus sometimes carried away even so 

 far from its proper home as Iceland. Bears have been 

 found floating on ice, so it is said, as much as two hun- 

 ini miles from the nearest land. Olaus Magnus, the 

 excellent Archbishop of Upsala, tells us of " I'rsi albi 

 maximi et fortissimi " found in Iceland ; these have been 



carried thither in some such way, for the Polar bear 

 cannot be considered to be a native of that island. Skins 

 of these bears were frequently ofl'ered by hunters, the 

 Archbishop further remarks, to various churches, "in 

 order that tlie priest when celebrating mass at a time of 

 terrible cold may not suffer from his feet." The Polar 

 bear, in fact, as his habits show, is an amphibious 

 creature, well on the way to become purely aquatic in 

 mode of life. It offers a hint, in fact, of how the sea lion 

 may have sprung from a terrestrial ancestor. The feet of 

 the Polar bear are already very large ; make them larger and 

 shorten the leg ia a corresponding fashion, and the flipper 

 of the sea lion is nearly arrived at. Zoologists think that 

 of all land carnivora the marine walruses, seals, and sea lions 

 are most nearly akin to the baars ; so that the expression 

 " sea Ui»i " is so far misleading as to the aifinities of the 

 animal. But it is after all rather in habit and ways of 

 feeding that the ( rsus mnritimwi has gone somewhat seal- 

 wards. Its structure, though sutHciently divergent from 

 that of other bears to justify, according to some, its separa- 

 tion as a distinct genus, Thalass anios, is not really greatly 

 modified. It is, indeed, one of many instances which 

 show that change of function frequently precedes change 

 of structure. With the equipment of the most ordinary 

 forest-living and honey-feeding bear, the Polar bear pursues 

 a totally different kind of game, proving a match for the 

 active seal and for still more active fish. This bear, feasting, 

 as it does, upon seals, or, on occasions, upon the decaying 

 carcass of a whale, has yet got a reputation for ferocity 

 which seems to be a theory founded upon its size, and to 

 be largely apochryphal. The friendly manner of the two 

 young beasts now at the " Zoo" will, to some extent, dispel 

 this view, which most travellers who have had experience 

 of the animal in its native places disbelieve. It has, how- 

 ever, to judge from what we are told by Mr. R. Brown, a 

 " temper." He relates that, having unsuccessfully stalked 

 a seal, a large bear exhibited signs of considerable annoy- 

 ance. "The rage of the animal was boundless ; it roared 

 hideously, tossing the snow in the air, and trotted off in a 

 most indignant state of mind ! " With regard to human 

 beings the bear is comparatively mild — if let alone. Sir 

 Leopold M'Clintock tells of " a native of Upernavik " who 

 one day " was out visiting his seal-nets. He found a seal 

 entangled, and, whilst kneeling down over it upon the ice 

 to get it clear, he received a slap on the back — from his 

 companion, as he supposed ; but a second and heavier 

 blow made him look smartly round. He was horror- 

 stricken to see a peculiarly grim old baar mstead of his 

 comrade ! Without deigning further notice of the man. 

 Brum tore the seal out of the net and commenced his 

 supper. He was not interrupted ; nor did the man wait 

 to see the meal finished." 



More unpleasant was the experience of Mr. Brown and 

 his companions. " In 1861," writes Mr. Brown, " I saw 

 upwards of twenty all busily devouring the huge inflated 

 carcass of a Balana mi/stii-etm in Pond's Bay, on the wes- 

 tern shore of Davis Strait. We were foolish enough to 

 fire a few shots among them, when the bears sprang 

 furiously from the carcass and made for our boat. One 

 succeeded in getting its paw on to the gunwale, and it was 

 only by the vigorous application of an axe that we suc- 

 ceeded in relieving ourselves of so unwelcome an addition 

 to our crew." The fact seems to be that the Polar bear, 

 like many other wild and carnivorous beasts, takes no 

 particular notice of man unless unduly provoked to do so 

 by hunger or too marked an interference. When it does 

 make up its mind for revenge or food, it proceeds in a 

 fashion that marks it out from other bears ; instead of 

 hitijijiivj its victims as they do, it bites. 



