THE MAX IX THE WHITE CLOAK. G09 



and interesting animal is so well known to my readers that I need 

 not pause to describe him. 



In the deep gorges and dense forests which break up the monotony 

 of the lofty table-lands, live in fierce solitude the congeners of the 

 " Man in the White Cloak" of the Polar deserts Bears with a thick 

 fur and of a sombre hue. While these animals seem designed by 

 their organization to feed upon flesh, and while their strength enables 

 them to seize upon the largest game which, indeed, they occasionally 

 do their diet is omnivorous, and they even exhibit, in general, a 

 marked predilection for the aliment of a vegetable nature. The 

 reader, moreover, will remember with what eagerness the bears of our 

 menageries and zoological gardens devour the bread, cakes, or fruit 

 which their visitors press upon them. In their native mountain 

 homes they will rather fly from man than attack him ; but if 

 assailed and closely pressed, they defend themselves bravely, rearing 

 upon their hind-feet, and endeavouring to suffocate their aggressor 

 with their muscular arms. If caught in their youth they are 

 easily tamed, and display a greater intelligence than any of the other 

 carnivora. 



The genus Ursidce, or Bears, is wholly wanting in Africa, but 

 has its representatives in Europe, Asia, and America. The European 

 species are : the great Brown Bear, formerly distributed over all the 

 mountains and through all the forests of Western and Northern 

 Europe, and which is still sufficiently common in the Alps, the 

 Pyrenees, and some wooded highland districts of Russia ; and the 

 Bear of Asturias, found only in the sierras of the Iberian peninsula. 

 The latter is of smaller dimensions than the former. His hide is 

 tawny. 



Asia possesses : the Syrian Bear and Bear of Lebanon, two 

 varieties of the same species, distinguished by Horsfield under the 

 name of Ursus Isabella, in allusion to the dirty brown colour of his 

 skin ; the Bear of Thibet, which is found in the Himalayan chain 

 and the islands of Japan in size and appearance he approximates to 

 our European bear, but differs in the blacker shades of his hair ; the 



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