186 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



china-white snowberry, and the common wintergreon 

 {Gaultheria procumlen),), to all of which the hear is 

 partial, there is another mountain berry actually 

 named for him, the bearberry {Arctostaphylos Uva- 

 Urs'i), of which he is said to he 

 particularly fond. But he does 

 not always confine himself to 

 the wilderness in his search for 

 sustenance : he is a great rover, 

 especially in autumn, and not 

 infrequently he comes down 

 the mountain side and plun- 

 ^' ders the orchard of its fruit ; 



he will even enter the barnyard, and his presence 

 there is the immediate signal for an uproarious com- 

 motion among the animals. It is a great pity one 

 can not persuade the horse that the bear is quite as 

 much of a coward as himself. Indeed, two such cow- 

 ards it would be difficult to find the like of through- 

 out the animal kingdom. I have rarely heard of a 

 black bear attacking any creature larger than a calf, 

 and in the presence of a bear a horse loses his head, 

 shies, jumps, trembles like an aspen, and bolts if he 

 gets a chance. For that matter, the keen-scented horse 

 will smell a bear through a two-inch pine board, and 

 the intervening side of a barn is, of course, far from 

 reassuring to him. Last summer an itinerant French- 



