A CHAT ABOUT INDIAN WILD BEASTS. 165 
they climb up trees without a branch to the height of sixty or 
seventy feet by simply digging their claws into the soft bark. 
The Karens, following their example, fill a haversack with 
bamboo pegs, and driving in one and standing on it, they insert 
others into the bark the whole way up; and I have seen them 
thus ascend the bole of a forest monster fully twenty-five feet 
in circumference, and without a branch for one hundred feet, 
after the huge honey-combs pendant on the lower lateral 
branches. 
A large Bear will be about six feet in length, and weigh close 
on eight hundred pounds; not that I ever weighed one myself, 
but I have been told so by those who had. They seldom have 
more than a couple or, at the most, three cubs at a birth, and 
the little ones often ride on their mother’s back. More people 
are killed annually in Assam by Bears than by Tigers. They 
are fond of rocky ground, and have their dens formed naturally 
by slabs of stone lying one on the top of the other; but in parts 
of Assam and Burma they lie on the open prairies in a dense 
patch of either long grass or in a thicket. Although Bears are 
very numerous in both countries, they seldom fall a prey to the 
sportsmen excepting in the hilly districts. When hunted on 
Elephants, they manage to evade the line, the noise made in 
forcing a way through the long grass gives them warning that 
their enemy man is nearing their lair, and they quietly shamble 
away. Why Bears should be so subject to cataract of the 
eyes I do not know, but it is a common disease amongst 
them. Hlephants dislike Bears, and fear them more than they 
do Tigers. 
The Burmese Bear, Ursus malayanus, has a glossy skin, with 
shortish hair, muzzle blackish, but face, mouth, and lower jaw a 
dirty white, throat black, dividing the white part just mentioned 
from a large heart-shaped white mark covering nearly the whole 
breast, with a large black spot in the centre, and a few minute 
black dots over the remaining portion; the lower part of this 
heart is continued by a white line between the fore legs, and 
widened out again on the belly into a large irregularly-shaped 
spot. The head is flattened and very short, with far more of a 
canine than an ursine expression. Ears very small, smooth, and 
round. It seldom exceeds four and a half feet in length. It is 
