NATURAL HISTORY AND DISTRIBUTION OF BEARS. 255 
nor wild beast enjoys any particular exemption from these per- 
sistent tormentors. The amateur fisherman is often compelled 
to give up his pastime at the most tempting moment, and the 
woodcutter is driven into the clearings, and the bear and elk into 
the lakes. In Asia at the same season it is also a common occur- 
rence to see the Himalayan brown bear basking or sound asleep on 
the melting surface of a glacier, as much to escape the torments 
of insects as for coolness ; in fact, this species does not display a 
sufficient pliability of constitution to enable it to withstand 
extremes of heat and cold. Now, whatever may have been the 
character in these respects of such of its compeers as the cave 
lion and the hyena in pre-historic times, their present descend- 
ants have become restricted to warm regions, although the 
tiger, so closely allied to the former, is a native of northern as 
well as middle and southern Asia. Indeed, in attempting to 
speculate on the nature of the climates during the cave periods, 
from a knowledge of the present characters and haunts of 
living species, we must always bear in mind the examples 
of the hairy mammoth and rhinoceros, but for the discovery of 
which it would still be a wonder how, if like their naked 
representatives, they could have withstood the rigours of northern 
winters. Probably the hippopotamus of those days was also 
covered with thick fur, and the shaggy mane now restricted to 
the lower and fore parts of the lion may have been continued, 
more or less, over the entire body. Again, naturalists are apt 
to associate the reindeer with Arctic climates, and argue that 
similar conditions must have prevailed at one time in the 
South of France, where the fossil remains of this animal have 
been discovered. But although the climate was, no doubt, 
more rigorous then than at present, there is no need that it 
should have equalled that of Lapland of the present day, 
inasmuch as the caribou or woodland reindeer was common 
in the New England States of North America within the last 
two hundred years, and I found it plentiful in the forests 
of New Brunswick, latitude 45° N. Indeed, if we were to 
suppose western Europe covered with forest trees, whereby the 
mean temperature would be lowered, there is nothing to have 
prevented the animal from migrating in the colder portion of 
the year from Norway to the shores of the Mediterranean, just 
as Richardson* found the barren-ground reindeer traversing 
similar distances in northern Canada. 
It has just been stated that the fossil bears met with in 
caverns of Grermany are demonstrably much larger than either 
fossil or recent specimens of the grizzly bear. It is the case, 
also, that skulls and bones dug out of bogs in Grreat Britain far 
* u Fauna Boreali Americana.’ 
