suffice to vary the usual diet. On the journeys for food, the whole 

 family may make their way from one sheet of ice to another until 

 they are far out at sea and sometimes carried away to unfamiliar 

 shores, where they must appease their hunger by invasions among 

 domestic flocks. 



Although usually timid and unaggressive beings in their dealings 

 with man, the female with her young often proves an exception to 

 the rule. She has good cause, however, for her irritable temper, as 

 the cubs are born soon after she begins to hibernate and the spring 

 finds her thin, half -starved and with all a mother's jealousy and 

 fear for her offspring. The male does not hibernate, but, after 

 seeing his mate safely disposed of in the cleft rock or under the 

 projecting ledge which is to be her winter shelter, returns to his 

 ordinary duties of active life. 



65 



