Bears and Wolves. 57 



and being baited have induced : and, secondly, from its 

 apparently awkward personal appearance. 



Yet in freedom it is by no means a clumsy or ridiculous 

 animal A\Tien it sets itself going after any one it wishes to 

 catch, the bear displays an agility and address which those who 

 have been hunted by it declare to be amazing. And when it 

 wants to extract beetle-grubs from the ground, or ants out of 

 their nest, honey from a bee-tree, fruit off a slender bough, or 

 birds' eggs out of a nest, it shows itself to be as ingenious 

 and skilful as any other animal that has to live by its wits. 

 To get, for instance, at the beetle-grubs, it scratches off the 

 upper earth and then sucks them up out of the ground — an 

 appUcation of a scientific process which no animal without 

 a prodigious reser\e of air-force could hope to accom- 

 pUsh. When it wishes to empty an ant-hive, it knocks 

 the top off with its paws, and then, applying its mouth to 

 the central gallery of the nest, inhales its breath forcibly, 

 thereby setting up such a current of air that all the ants and 

 their eggs come whirling up into his mouth like packets 

 through a pneumatic tube. AMien robbing a hive it keeps 

 one paw over its nose, its only vulnerable point, and when 

 in quest of wild apricots or acorns it not only balances 

 itself with all the judgment of a rope-walker, but uses its 

 weight very cleverly so as to bring other boughs within 

 reach of its curved claws. Xor, while doing this, does it 

 guiltily conceal what it is about. On the contrary, when 

 sucking at an ant-heap or grub-hole it makes such a noise 

 that on a still evening it can be heard a quarter of a mile 

 off, and when up a tree, and not alarmed, it goes smashing 

 about among the boughs as if bears were not only the rightful 

 J lords of the manor, but as if there were no such things as 

 enemies in the world. 



This secluded, simple-minded, unsuspecting animal con- 

 trasts very strikingly with the guilty-seeming, stealthy, blood- 

 preferring wolf. The poets, however, bring the two beasts 



