4736 TuE ZooLocisT—JANUARY, 1876. 
the air, smelling for food. The Esquimaux often catch them by it, 
—a maneeuvre which requires cleverness and self-possession,—and 
many of them bear marks of the battle fought under such circum- 
stances. Head wounds excepted, a shot will sometimes take away 
all power of resistance in the strangest manner. Meetings with 
bears are attended by very different results. It often happens that 
a party of sledge travellers, under peculiar circumstances, and with 
but little time to spare, pass one or more of them, sometimes but a 
few steps off, when they cause no other feeling than that of curiosity 
and astonishment. Krauschner, the engineer, was the snow- 
purveyor for the kitchen, and had to go twice a-day with his sledge 
to the neighbouring glacier. Once a bear attached himself to him ; 
he walked with dignified steps as an escort behind the sledge, and 
not until the engineer had reached the ship did our shout of alarm 
make him aware of the presence of his somewhat doubtful friend. 
On the whole the flesh of the bear (particularly that of old” 
animals) is far inferior to that of the brown bear; it is coarse and 
tough, and tastes more or less of train-oil. Barentz and many 
others maintain that the liver is prejudicial to health. The flesh, 
however, we have always found wholesome, and the Esquimaux 
west of Davis Straits give it to their dogs. 
Sometimes, on our sledge journeys, we were surprised in the 
tent; but we never set a thorough watch, chiefly because we none 
of us really slept, and a large creature like that could not approach 
without a slight rustle. A tent is to a bear thoroughly unintel- 
ligible, and an object alike of mistrust and curiosity. One of Kane’s 
companions, who was roused by the growling of a bear and the 
appearance of its head through the aperture of the tent, had the 
presence of mind to put a lighted box of lucifer-matches under his 
nose, an insult which he magnanimously forgave, and disappeared 
at once. Our first meeting with one was on the 4th of August 
among the pack-ice, the day before we landed in Greenland. We 
had laid-to by a large ice-floe; when about three hundred steps 
from us we saw two bears. The burning of seal’s fat had drawn 
their attention, for their black nozzles were high in the air, though 
they were shy of approaching the ship. Copeland, Sengstacke and 
Payer got into the boat, and, under cover of the steep floe, rowed 
towards them; but the newly-formed ice, which filled a creek in 
the floe, only admitted of Payer’s landing; he shot hurriedly and 
missed, and they at once disappeared among the hummocks. It is 
