98 
MY FIRST BEAR. 
South, but it will be seen that at times the Southern brutes 
are savage enough to satisfy any one. Jerdon, in his 
Mammals of India, quoting fi^om Tickell says, "The power 
of suction in the bear, as well as of propelling wind from its 
mouth is very great. It is by these means enabled to pro- 
cure with ease, its common food of white ants and larvae ; 
on arriving at an ant hill, the bear scrapes away with the fore 
feet until he reaches the large combs at the bottom of the 
galleries. It then with violent puflFs dissipates the dust and 
crumbled particles of the nest and sucks out the inhabitants of 
the comb by such forcible inhalations as to be beard at two 
hundred yards distance or more. Large larvae are in this 
way sucked out from great depths under the soiL . . . 
"In running the bear moves in a rough canter shaking up 
and down but gets over very bad ground with great speed, 
regardless of tumbles down the rough places. The sucking 
of the paw accompanied by a drumming noise when at rest 
is common to all bears, especially after meals, and during 
the heat of the day they may often be heard puffing and 
humming far down in the caverns or fissures of rocks," 
The first bear I killed was in our trip in the Dandilly 
Forest He had taken up his abode for the day in the 
middle of a bamboo clump, the centre stems of which had 
been cut out by the natives, leaving the outer ones standnig, 
affording a nice shady sort of summer house, and in this the 
bear was fast asleep. Our shikaries brought us up to the 
opposite side of the entrance without awaking him ; we soon 
did so, liowever, by opening a fusilade. He did not attempt 
to bolt, only tried hard to get at us through the bamboos 
but in a very short time he was "hors de combat"; it was 
very like shooting a bear in a cage, but we were young at 
