66 The Carntvora. 
and preference, subsisting on berries and roots, and will pass 
animal food untouched when it can procure a sufficiency of 
these. It readily accommodates its appetite to a miscellaneous 
fare, including fish, insects, eggs, and small quadrupeds. 
The family has a wide geographical range, from the Arctic 
circle to the tropics, and is well distributed over Europe, Asia, 
and America; but has no representative in the Australian and 
Polynesian group of islands, nor in the Eastern group of the 
Malayan region, and is confined to the northern portions of the 
African continent. In all the cooler regions the bear appears 
to hibernate, or at least indicates a tendency to do so; going 
into winter quarters when fat, and remaining ensconced in a 
hollow tree or cave, in a state of somnolent inactivity, when the 
respiration becomes slow, and the store of carbonaceous material 
laid up in the body is but gradually consumed. It is not, how- 
ever, so apparent how the evaporation from the lungs is 
compensated for during a period of sleep extending over three or 
more months. Hibernation is mainly determined by scarcity of 
food in the winter months, especially in the case of herbivorous 
bears. There is good ground for believing that even the 
American brown bear frequently prowls about during the whole 
winter, but possibly these are only the males. The old males of 
the grizzly bear may be commonly seen in winter, while the 
young and the gravid females hibernate. The same habit, 
according to some Arctic explorers, prevails with the young and 
males of the Polar bear ; while the old females lie up in their 
winter shelter in a snow drift, and there produce their cubs. 
Mr. Leigh Smith’s party confirmed this in the winter of 1881-82. 
They never shot a female bear from October to the middle of 
March, whereas the very large males were numerous throughout 
the whole winter. : 
The most formidable of the family is certainly the American 
grizzly bear, which has the reputation of attacking man “ at 
sight.” The beast is immensely strong, no doubt, and a man is 
crushed instantly in its huge arms; but we must accept with 
reserve the stories that credit it with killing and dragging a 
