CARNIVORA. 237 



by numerous couples of bear dogs and mastiffs, and 

 whole troops of country people, some bearing nets 

 of great length, others implements to make fires, and 

 all furnished with horns, trumpets, drums, and other 

 kinds of noisy instruments, assemble to drive the 

 game together, and destroy it by open force. 



British, or Caledonian Bears, are noticed by the 

 classic writers, and were taken for the purpose of 

 supplying the Roman games ; and gladiators, at one 

 time Christian victims, and malefactors always, 

 were exposed to fight, or to be torn by them, and 

 administer to the ferocious taste of the city, so long 

 and so deeply inured to sanguinary pleasures, that 

 even the efforts of Christian authority could not en- 

 tirely subdue it, till a foreigner, and that foreigner a 

 Goth, spoke in the language of a conqueror, and 

 was obeyed. Bear baiting in England was likewise 

 a pastime of all classes, from the sovereign to the 

 beggar ; and a bear garden is still a proverbial ex- 

 pression, to denote what is emphatically vulgar, if 

 not ferocious. 



The Pyrenees and the Asturian mountains still 

 contain a variety of the Alpine Bear, which, in youth 

 more particularly, is clothed in a dirty whitish livery, 

 with only some brown about the head and shoul- 

 ders. 



The Black Bear of Sweden, with a permanently 

 narrow white ring round the neck, if it be only a 

 variety, as Baron Cuvier was latterly inclined to be- 

 lieve, still is one constantly found in the country 

 where the brown species is likewise abundant ; but, 



