140 WILD ANIMALS. 



animals. The head is somewhat flattened and elongated, and sur- 

 mounted by small, erect ears. The mouth is not large, but the 

 jaws are verj powerful. The fur constitutes their beauty. It is 

 very fine, long, and of a yellowish-white colour, which, harmonizing 

 with the snow of its frigid habitation, enables the animal to lie 

 concealed, and so not alarm its prey, a power very essential to its 

 well-being in a climate where the atmosphere is so clear, that a 

 coloured object moving about at very long distances would be 

 easily discernible by contrast with the uniform background. The 

 fur is so long and thick that it does not easily become wet and 

 as a resultance freeze into a mass of ice whenever the animal 

 quits the water for the land in the winter. It is also said to have 

 a peculiarly repellent power of snow, and pieces of the animal's 

 skin are in consequence used by the Esquimaux to remove the 

 snow from their clothes before entering their huts. 

 ■ A large specimen of a polar bear will measure over eight feet 

 in length, and weigh anywhere between 1000 and 1600 lbs. 



The late Frank Buckland says in one of his books that his friend. 

 Captain Gray, wrote him the following letter: — ■" Bears attain a 

 very large size. I shot one in 1870 eleven feet from nose to tail, 

 and eleven feet across the hind-legs. I would not say that this 

 was by any means the largest I have seen, but it was the most 

 perfect I have ever come across. Males, before they attain this 

 size, are generally destroyed in encounters among themselves. 

 Bears are great swimmers, and it takes a smart pull in a whale- 

 boat to come up with one if it is any distance away. They only 

 use the fore-paws in swimming ; the hind-legs are at rest, and 

 stretched out behind them. They can dive, too, like a whale, 

 down on one side of a piece of ice and up at the other, when 

 pursued or hunting for food. I was very much amused on one 

 voyage at a certain bear : he was upon a sheet of very thin ice, and 

 when he came to a place which could not bear him, he lay down 

 flat, stretching out his legs both behind and before, and pulled 

 himself along by his fore-paws, thus covering as great a surface 

 of ice as possible ; and when he did fall through, which he did 

 frequently, he dived for some place where he found firmer 

 footing." 



