368 THE POLAR BEAR. 



she saw that they refused to eat, she laid her paws 

 first upon one, and then upon the other, and 

 endeavoured to raise them, up : all this while it 

 was pitiful to hear her moan. When she found 

 she could not stir them, she went off, and when 

 she had got to some distance, looked back and 

 moaned ; and that not availing her to entice them 

 away, she returned, and, smelling round them, 

 began to lick their wounds. She went off a second 

 time as before ; and, having crawled a few paces, 

 looked again behind her, and for some time stood 

 moaning. Bat still her cubs not rising to follow her, 

 she returned to th.em again ; and with signs of in- 

 expressible fondness, went round, pawing them, 

 and moaning. Finding at last, that they were cold 

 and lifeless, she raised her head towards the ship, 

 and uttered a growl of despair, which the murderers 

 returned with a volley of musket-balls. She fell 

 between her cubs, and died licking their wounds. 



The males, s:iys Mr. Hearne, are, at a certain time 

 of the year, so much attached to their mates, that 

 he has often seen one of them, when a female was 

 killed, come and put his two fore paws over her, and 

 in this position suffer himself to be shot rather than 

 quit her *. 



During the v;inter these animals retire and bed 

 themselves deep in the snow, or under the fixed ice 

 of some eminence ; where they pass in a state of tor- 

 pidity the long and dismal Arctic night, and re-ap- 

 pear only with the return of the sun. 



* Ilcarne, 386. 



