NATURAL HISTORY SKETCHES 333 



common to the tide waters and more often taken as far 

 down as there were fish weirs. 



They have been identified in several of our Maine 

 rivers, also in Lock Lomond and Mespeck, N. B., in Nova 

 Scotia, in St. John's Lake, Grand Lake, Salmon River 

 and Pockwock Lake, and I have no doubt it will be found 

 in many of the rivers of clear water coming into the St. 

 Lawrence, and when caught are called young salmon. 

 I have seen specimens of S. gloveri caught on our rivers 

 that weighed ten or twelve pounds. The large fish 

 seldom take fly or bait, but keep in the deep water. 



Strange Ways of Bears 



Bears are queer animals and the ways of the wild 

 female almost past finding out. There is an old expres- 

 sion of Pliny's, "licked into shape." Walsh explains it 

 as having arisen out of an early superstition that a bear's 

 cub is born an amorphous mass and is licked into shape 

 by the dam. The ancients took it as a serious state- 

 ment of natural truth, Pliny giving the following account 

 of the phenomenon : " Bears, when first born, are shape- 

 less masses of white flesh, a little larger than mice, their 

 claws alone being prominent. The mother then licks 

 them gradually into proper shape." Shakespeare, in 

 Henry VI., Part III., refers to this superstition in the 

 following lines : 



To disproportion me in every part, 

 Like to a chaos or an unlicked whelp 

 That carries no impression like the dam. 



There is interesting bear reading by Pallas, Pennant, 

 Godman and Richardson, but not much about the very 



