466 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



bestowed upon them in many of the zoological gardens of the 

 world. 



Speaking of zoological gardens and Polar bears reminds me 

 of an instance that fell within my own experience a good many 

 years ago. Dr. W. A. Conklin was, at the time referred to, the 

 superintendent of the gardens of Central Park in New York City, 

 and he was doing the writer the honor of showing him the ani- 

 mals under his charge, as well as the general arrangement of his 

 then much cramped institution. We were standing in front of 

 the bars that confined the Polar bears to their pit; an old male 

 of the species within his prison stood close to us, and he was 

 yawning most heavily. A young city Arab about fifteen years 

 old, lustily smoking a cigarette, had strolled up and stood next 

 to me in front of the bars. As the bear gave his perhaps final 

 deep yawn it appeared to be too much for this depraved son of 

 the streets, who, with a precision equaled only by the brutality 

 of the act, tossed the lighted end of his finished cigarette down 

 the gaping throat of the ursine representative of the boreal re- 

 gions of the earth. The animal, smarting under the sudden and 

 intense pain, first snapped his powerful jaws together, the pecu- 

 liar noise created thereby attracting not only the attention of Dr. 

 Conklin, but also that of all the spectators standing nearby. But 

 this was not all, for the now infuriated bear rose to his full 

 height upon his hind legs and gave vent to a roar that seems to 

 me ought to have been distinctly heard by another entirely dif- 

 ferent kind of bear, or bears, down in their Wall street dens. Dr. 

 Conklin quickly turned to me, to ascertain if I knew what in the 

 world could be the matter with the fellow, when, with equal 

 promptitude, the nature of the case was pointed out to him. 

 Without a word of warning he pounced upon the culprit, and 

 begging me to accompany him, he was, with many a hearty shake 

 and admonition, ushered into the presence of the park police 

 court, where a stiff fine was very soon imposed upon the fiendish 

 perpetrator of the deed. As we passed away from the pit I 

 turned back, and noticed the outlandish capers of the poor bear 

 as he smarted under the sudden pain to which he had been in- 

 flicted. 



With respect to the small carnivora, we find a well-mounted 

 piece of the Pine Marten (Mustela martes. Linn.) that I am per- 

 mitted to present in Fig. 126, it being the reproduction of a photo- 

 graph of a specimen of that animal mounted by Mr. ter Meer, Jr. 



