THE KING OP THE WILDERNESS. 185 



last news I got of him in the fall was that he had 

 knocked the spigot out of a barrel of molasses some- 

 where in the neighborhood, and that particular part 

 of the country was very sticky. 



Besides having a most extraordinarily sweet tooth, 

 bruin is decidedly omnivorous ; his food is commonly 

 mice, turtles, frogs, fish, ants and their eggs, bees and 

 honey, wild cherries, blackberries, blueberries — in 

 fact, berries of every kind — fruits, vegetables, roots, 

 and not infrequently sheep, pigs, and poultry. If 

 you try him with a kitchen diet his taste is quite as 

 comprehensive ; it includes cake, bread, muffins, pie 

 and pudding, butter and eggs, ham, hominy, sweet- 

 meats, crackers and milk, pork and beans, corncake, 

 gingerbread — in fact, excepting pickles, I doubt 

 whether he would refuse anything contained in the 

 larder. In his native wilds he will tear old stumps 

 to pieces to find ants and bees, dig out the nests of 

 white-faced hornets and yellow-jackets, and, caring 

 little for stings, devour the grubs with great relish ; 

 scoop out the honeycomb from bees' nests, regardless 

 of the army of furious insects ; tear down the branches 

 of the beech for the sweet beechnut ; strip the black 

 cherry of its prussic-acid-flavored fruit (which is his 

 great delight), and clean out a blueberry patch of 

 every berry, ripe or green, without greatly disturbing 

 the foliage. Besides the huckleberry, the beautiful 



