452 
COMMON BEAR. 
tree. The Bear will also catch and devour fish, 
occasionally frequenting the banks of rivers for 
that purpose. 
The Bear passes a considerable part of the winter 
in a state of repose and abstinence ; emerging only 
at distant intervals from his den, and again con- 
cealing himself in his retreat till the approach of 
the vernal season. The females are said to con- 
tinue in this state much longer than the males, 
and it is during this period that they bring forth 
their young, which are commonly two in num- 
ber. These the ancients imagined to be nearly 
shapeless masses^ gradually licked and fashioned 
into regular form by the parent; an opinion now 
sufficiently exploded. On this subject the learned 
Sir Thomas Brown has a chapter in his celebrated 
work^ the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Er- 
rors, and observes, that we have the testimony of 
three authentic philosophers," in confutation 
of the notion, viz. first, of Matthiolus, who, in 
his Comment on Dioscorides, affirms, that, in a 
newly killed Bear which he saw opened, the young 
were distinct in all their limbs; secondly, of 
Julius Scaliger, who affirms the same thing of one 
killed by some hunters in the Alps; and, lastly^ 
of Aldrovandus, who informs us, that in the 
Museum at Bologna there was, in his time, the 
foetus of a Bear preserved in spirits, and which 
was as completely formed as that of other animals. 
The young, however, though not shapeless, have a 
different aspect from the grown animal ; the snout 
being much sharper, and their colour yellowish : 
