132 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
unsheltered summit of an iceberg to every other situa- 
tion. Fearless of cold, or rather appearing to be most 
at ease in those latitudes where the cold is most intense, 
it rarely migrates, even with its floating islands, much 
beyond the precincts of the Arctic Circle. Consider- 
able numbers of them are propelled, by a continuance 
of the northern and western winds, on that part of the 
coast of Siberia which lies between the Lena and the 
Jenisei ; and the great frozen island of Nova Zembla 
is periodically subject to their visitations. On the 
whole northern coast of America, even so far south as 
Hudson's Bay, in Greenland and Spitzbergen, they are 
by no means uncommon ; but they are said never to 
have been observed on the coast of Kamtschatka or in 
the sea which separates the great western continent 
from Asia. Occasionally they approach the shores of 
Iceland and even of Norway ; but only when driven by 
necessity, and to meet a certain death at the hands of 
the hardy natives. 
In the situations which it frequents it is obvious that 
the Polar Bear cannot subsist upon a vegetable diet, 
which it has in fact no means of procuring. But 
although of necessity carnivorous, it is not essentially 
a predatory animal in the strict sense of the term ; for 
it seems generally to prefer a dead to a living prey. 
Its principal food consists in the floating carcasse of 
whales and fishes ; but before the breaking up of the 
ice, and on the approach of winter, it watches at the 
openings in the frozen deep for the seals and other 
animals which approach them in quest of air, seizes 
them with great dexterity the moment they emerge 
from beneath, and devours them with disgusting vora- 
city. It also sometimes feeds on living fish, more 
especially when they enter in shoals the gulfs and 
inlets of the sea ; and Cartwright mentions an instance 
