THE BROWN BEAR. 55 



bears. In the hack and neck of a horse, Mr. Lloyd saw holes 

 so deep that he could have buried both his hands in them -, and 

 he has heard of the whole hind-quarters of a cow or a horse 

 having been actually devoured, and yet the poor creatures found 

 alive. 



Bears seldom if ever eat up the children that watch the 

 herds. Occasionally they devour adults, but only when they 

 foolishly attack them ; as in a case recorded by Dr. Mellerlong, 

 who saw a hand, which was all that a bear had left, of a 

 woman who had chosen to hit him on the head with a billet of 

 wood. Mr. Lloyd heard of a bear that, in the agonies of death, 

 thinking he had got his opponent in his arms, hugged a tree, and 

 tore it up by the roots in his fall. Inferior animals he strikes at 

 once with his paws on the forepart of the head, laying bare the 

 whole skull and beating it in ; but Mr. Lloyd never knew of any 

 case in which a bear either hugged a person in his arms, or 

 struck at him with his fore-paw in the same manner as a tiger 

 or a cat. He seems to tumble men down, and then to fasten his 

 teeth in their arms or throat. A Swedish boor alleged, as the 

 reason of this difference in the bear's procedure with men and 

 animals, that " he supposed he was forbidden by Providence." 



During the summer the bear is always lean - } but in autumn 

 he gets very fat. Towards the end of October, he leaves off 

 eating altogether for that year j his bowels and stomach become 

 quite empty, and contracted into a very small compass, while 

 the extremity of them is closed by an indurated substance, which 

 in Sweden is called tappen* He retires to his den, and very 

 wisely falls asleep. Professor Nillson avers he gets fatter and 

 fatter in his slumbers on to the end of February ; but Mr. Lloyd 

 is sceptical on that point, because, says he, " in the first place 



* The tappen is a hard substance which blocks up the last bowel during the 

 period of hibernation ; but it is voided about the middle of April when the 

 animal leaves his den and resumes his more active life. By chemical analysis, 

 Mr. Lloyd found it to consist of brown resin, green volatile oil, chlorophyle, 

 or the colouring matter of leaves, fat, oil, starch, woody matter, pectic acid, 

 formic acid, sulphates, phosphates, and muriates. The ashes of it contain 

 oxides of iron and manganese kali. J. H. F. 



