The Cannibal Habit in the Male 39 



He goes on to point out a curious result of his 

 enquiries at the gardens. Darwin had observed that 

 as a singular result of confinement, while the carnivora, 

 even from the tropics, breed freely there, the bear 

 family breed very seldom. Paulin reasoned that this 

 must be due to her organisation, and that in all 

 probability she bred seldom in the free state. Nature 

 had provided this as a check upon the bears increasing 

 unduly, and consequently the male would have no 

 propensity to devour the young. He asked Mr. Seth, 

 who had charge of the bears, and his reply was that 

 they seldom breed in the gardens, and that the male 

 never touches the whelps when they are born, nor 

 afterwards, and he is therefore allowed to remain all 

 the time. He was then asked if all the different kinds 

 of bears produced young in the gardens, and his reply 

 was that they did, " but they bred very seldom." Even 

 among the bears, however, there is one exception to 

 this rule. We are able to state on the reliable authority 

 of a hunter of big game in the Rocky Mountains that 

 the " grizzly " male does devour the young. 1 And 

 this is readily explained by the fact that the " grizzly " 

 is a prolific animal, whereas the common brown bear 

 breeds seldom and brings forth only one at a time. 

 The bear is as savage as the lion, but all the 

 difference lies in the one being prolific and the other 

 not. 



Paulin goes on to state that important as these 

 observations are to students of natural history, he has 

 never met a naturalist or a believer in *' natural selec- 

 tion " who was cognisant of the facts imparted by Mr. 

 Bartlett, and he observes that it is a curious fact that 

 Bartlett never refers to them in his various publica- 

 tions, even when it seemed difficult to avoid doing so. 



1 I was informed of this by Mr. Daly, an American, on his way 

 to shoot big game in British East Africa. 



