MAMMALIA. 33 
Captain Parry within Barrow’s Straits as far as Melville Island ; and the Esquimaux, 
to the westward of Mackenzie’s river, told Captain Franklin that they occasionally, 
though very rarely, visited that coast. The exact limit of their range to the 
westward is uncertain, but they are said not to be known on the islands in 
Behring’s Straits, nor on the coast of Siberia to the eastward of Tchutskoinoss. 
They are not mentioned by Langsdorff and other visiters of the north-west coast 
of America; nor did Captain Beechey meet with any in his late voyage to Icy 
Cape. None were seen on the coast between the Mackenzie and Copper Mine 
River; and Pennant informs us, that they are unknown along the shores of the 
White Sea, which is an inlet of a similar character. 
The Polar Bear being able to procure its food in the depth of even an Arctic 
winter, there is not the same necessity for its hibernating that exists in the case of 
the Black Bear, which feeds chiefly on vegetable matters ; and it is probable, that, 
although they may all retire occasionally to caverns in the snow, the pregnant 
females alone seclude themselves for the entire winter. It is mentioned in 
Le Roy’s narrative of the residence of four Russian seamen for six winters in 
Spitzbergen, and also in the account of Barentz’s winter in Nova Zembla, that the 
Bears disappeared with the sun, and returned again with that luminary, after an 
absence in the one case of four months, and in the other of three. Their retire- 
ment has been considered by some as a proof of their hibernation ; but, I think, the 
most probable explanation of it is that they went out to sea in search of food. 
Polar Bears were seen in the course of the two winters that Captain Parry 
remained on the coast of Melville Peninsula; and the Esquimaux of that quarter 
derive a considerable portion of their subsistence not only from the flesh of the 
female Bears, which they dig together with their cubs from under the snow, but 
also from the males that they kill when roaming at large at all periods of the 
winter. Hearne states with more precision, and, I believe, from actual observa- 
tion, that the males leave the land in the winter time and go out on the ice to the 
edge of the open water in search of seals, whilst the females burrow in deep snow- 
drifts from the end of December to the end of March, remaining without food, and 
bringing forth their young during that period; that when they leave their dens 
in March, their young, which are generally two in number, are not larger than 
rabbits, and make a foot-mark in the snow no bigger than a crown piece. He 
also informs us that the males are found in company with the females in August, 
and then exhibit great attachment to them. Mr. Andrew Graham’s observations, 
written before the publication of Hearne’s Narrative, confirm the account given by 
that traveller. “In winter,” says he, “the White Bear sleeps like other species of 
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