CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 5. CARXIVORA. 



171 



of the channel, and made me more deeply anxious to proceed. But at this moment our d< >gs 

 encountered a large male bear in the act of devouring a seal. The impulse was irresistible : I 

 lost all control over both dogs and drivers. They seemed dead to every thing but the passion 

 of pursuit. Off they sped with incredible swiftness ; the Esquimaux clinging to their sledges 

 and cheering their dogs with loud cries of 'Xannook!' A mad, wild chase, wilder than German 

 legend, — the dogs, wolves; the drivers, devils. After a furious run, the animal was brought to 

 bay ; the lance anil the rifle did their work, and we halted for a general feed. The dogs gorged 

 themselves, the drivers did as much, and we buried the remainder of the carcass in the snow. 

 A second bear had been tracked by the party to a large iceberg north of Cape Russell, fur we 

 had now traveled to the neighborhood of the Great Glacier. But the dogs were too much 

 distended by their abundant diet to move : their drivers were scarcely better. Rest was indis- 

 pensable." 



FOSSIL BEARS. 



We have already alluded to the fact, that the bones of various extinct Carnivora, and among 

 them those of bears, are found abundantly in the caves of Italy, Germany, France, and England. 

 In a single cavern, that of Kiilock, in England, Dr. Buckland estimated that there must be the 

 relics of at least twenty-five hundred bears. The history of these fossils well illustrates the wan- 

 derings of the human mind, when exercised upon matters of which it is ignorant. Two or three 

 centuries ago only — that is, before any just ideas of Geology were entertained — these bones were 

 considered as those of unicorns and dragons, and figured largely in the medical prescriptions of 

 the time. The caverns in the neighborhood of the Ilartz Mountains, abounding in relics of this 

 kind, were ransacked, and quantities of " unicorn bones" were taken away and sold, as possessing 

 marvelous healing virtues. So late as 1672, a German savan gave representations of some bones 

 taken from a cave in the Carpathians, as those of dragons, and by way of helping out the story, 

 he stated that dragons, living and flying about, were to be met with in Transylvania ! To doubt 

 these marvels in those days was reprobate infidelity. 



A ■- 



THE SLOTH BEAR. 



