CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 5. CARNIVORA. 
171 
of tlie ctanne], and made ine more deeply anxious to proceed. But at this moment our dogs 
encountered a large male bear in the act of devouring a seal. The impulse was irresistible : I 
lost all control over both dogs and drivers. They seemed dead to every thing but the passion 
of pursuit. Off they sped with incredible swiftness ; the Esquimaux clinging to their sledges 
and cheering their dogs with loud cries of 'Nannook!' A mad, wild chase, wilder than German 
legend, — the dogs, wolves ; the drivers, devils. After a furious run, the animal was brought to 
■ bay ; the lance and the rifle did their work, and we halted for a general feed. The dogs gorged 
themselves, the drivers did as much, and we buried the remainder of the carcass in the snow. 
A second bear had been tracked by the party to a large iceberg north of Cape Russell, for we 
had now traveled to the neighborhood of the Great Glacier. But the dogs were too much 
distended by their abundant diet to move : their drivers were scarcely better. Rest was indis- 
pensable." 
FOSSIL BEAES. 
We have already alluded to the fact, that the bones of various extinct Carnivora, and among 
1 them those of bears, are found abundantly in the caves of Italy, Germany, France, and England. 
In a single cavern, that of Kiilock, in England, Dr. Buckland estimated that there must be the 
I relics of at least twenty-five hundred bears. The history of these fossils well illustrates the wan- 
derings of the human mind, when exercised upon matters of which it is ignorant. Two or three 
centuries ago only — that is, before any just ideas of Geology were entertained — these bones were 
considered as those of unicorns and dragons, and figured largely in the medical prescriptions of 
the time. The caverns in the neighborhood of the Hartz Mountains, abounding in relics of this 
kind, were ransacked, and quantities of " unicorn bones" were taken away and sold, as possessing 
marvelous healing virtues. So late as 16 72, a German savan gave representations of some bones 
taken from a cave in the Carpathians, as those of j:lragons, and by way of helping out the story, 
he stated that dragons, living and flying about, were to be met with in Transylvania ! To doubt 
these marvels in those days was reprobate infidelity. 
THE SLOTH BEAR. 
