184 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



and claw a stick out of the water with the remain- 

 ing one. 



Of late years it is probable that extremely few 

 bears have been found in the Catskill woods ; but I 

 remember as a boy a great sportsman's resort on the 

 eastern slope of the hills not far from Cairo, called 

 Barney Butts's, where bearskins and tame bears years 

 ago were almost as common as chipmunks are now. 



One unfortunate young 

 bruin which I remember 

 better than the others 

 had lost a paw in a 

 steel trap ; it was said 

 that he had gnawed 

 it off (a not uncom- 

 mon thing for a 

 trapped bear to do), 

 escaped, and was recaptured after tracing his blood- 

 stained tracks over the frozen snow. The limb 

 eventually healed quite perfectly, and he managed 

 by the following summer to do as well with three 

 legs as most of his kind did with four. But I never 

 could forget the picture which my imagination con- 

 jured up of poor bruin hobbling in anguish over the 

 icy snow, a wretched victim of man's inhumanity; 

 so he was regaled with cakes and lumps of sugar, the 

 best way of showing him my boyish sympathy. The 



