296 HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS. 



-"There the shapeless Bear, 



" With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn : 

 '' Slow pac'd, and sourer as the storms increase, 

 " He makes his bed beneath th' inclement drift; 

 "And, with stern patience, scorning weak complaint, 

 " Hardens his heart against assailing want." 



It has seldom been seen farther south than New- 

 foundland, but abounds chiefly on the shores of 

 Hudson's Bay, Greenland, and Spitzbergen on one 

 side, and those of Nova-Zembla on the other. It 

 has been sometimes found in the intermediate 

 countries of Norway and Iceland; but such as 

 have appeared in those parts have always been 

 driven thither upon floating sheets of ice; so that 

 those countries are only acquainted with them by 

 accident. 



During summer, they take up their residence on 

 large islands of ice, and frequently pass from one to 

 another. They swim well, and can go to the 

 distance of six or seven leagues; they likewise dive, 

 but do not continue long under water. When the 

 pieces of ice are detached by strong winds or 

 currents, the Bears allow themselves to be carried 

 along with them; and as they cannot regain the 

 land, or abandon the ice on which they are em- 

 barked, they often perish in the open sea. Those 

 which arrive with the ice on the coasts of Iceland 

 and Norway, are almost famished with hunger from 

 the length of their voyage, and are extremely vora- 

 cious As soon as the natives discover one of them, 

 they arm themselves, and presently dispatch him. 



The ferocity of the Bear is as remarkable as its 

 attachment to its young. A few years since, the 

 crew of a boat belonging to a ship in the Whale 

 fishery, shot at a Bear at a short distance, and 



