202 UKsiD^:. 



company. Tbey inliabit bush and t'orest-juugle and hills, and are 

 particularly fond of caves in the hot season and monsoon, and also 

 when they liave younf^. Throughout several parts of the ])eninsula 

 of India there are numerous hills of a kind of gi-anitoid gneiss that 

 weathers into huge loose rounded masses. These blocks remain 

 piled on each other, and the great cavities beneath them are 

 favourite resorts of bears, as in such places the heat of the sun, and 

 some of the insects (flies, mosquitoes, &c.) that are most trouble- 

 some in the monsoon, can be a^oided. In the cold season, and at 

 other times where no caves are available, this animal passes the day 

 in grass or bushes or in holes in the banks of ravines. It roams 

 in search of food at night, and, near human habitations, is rarely 

 seen in the daytime ; but in wild tracts, uninhabited by man, it may 

 be found wandering about as late as 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning, 

 and again an hour or even more before sunset in the afternoon. 

 In wet or cloudy weather, as in the monsoon, it sometimes keeps 

 on the move all day. But the sloth-bear, although, like most other 

 Indian animals, it shuns the midday sun, appears by no means so 

 sensitive to heat as might be expected from its black fur, and it 

 appears far less reluctant to expose itself at noonday than the tiger 

 is. I have seen a family of bears asleep at midday in May on a 

 hill-side in the sun. They had lain down in the shade of a small 

 tree, but the shade had shifted without their being disturbed. It 

 is scarcely necessary to observe that this bear does not hybernate. 



Owing to its long shaggy coarse fur, its peculiarly shaped head, its 

 long mobile snout, and its short hind legs, this is probably the 

 most uncouth in appearance of all the bears, and its antics are as 

 comical as its appearance. Its usual pace is a quick \\alk, but if 

 alarmed or hurried it breaks into a clumsy gallop, so rough that 

 when the animal is going away at full speed it looks almost as if 

 propelled from behind and rolled over and over. It climbs over 

 rocks well, and, like other bears, if alarmed or fired at on a steep 

 hill-side, not unfrequently rolls head over heels down hill. It 

 climbs trees, but slowly and heavily, the unmistakable scratches 

 left on the bark showing ho«- often its feet have slipped back some 

 inches before a firm hold was secured. I cannot, howe\er, confirm 

 the statement of some observers that this animal only ascends trees 

 with rough bark ; unless I am greatly mistaken I have seen its 

 scratches far up the smooth stems of l-oicd trees {Tcrmitialia 

 arjiina). 



The food of the sloth-bear consists almost entirely of fruits and 

 insects. Amongst the former the jujube plum or her {Zizi/j^hus 

 jujuba), the fruits of the ebony tree {Biospyros mehnioj-i/(on\ 

 jamwi {Euyenia jamhvlma), hel {AujU marmelos), and of various 

 kinds of figs, especially bar or banyan (Ficus iiidica) and yidar 

 (F. (/lomerata), the pods of Cassia fistula, and the fleshy sweet 

 flower of the mhoiva (Bassia laiifolia) are much eaten by these 

 animals, each in its season, but many other wild and cultivated 

 fruits are devoured when procurable. Beetles and their larva?, the 

 honey and young of bees, and above all the combs of termites or 



