THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
time on roots, grass, fruit, insects, fish, carcasses and a host of other things. 
He likes nothing better than to find a “ cache ” of some white man and to 
scatter the contents and devour all the sugar and pork. 
I thought that there was one thing a black bear would not eat, and that 
was brass cartridges, and there I was wrong. One day, in Newfoundland, 
I left a box of brass shot-gun cartridges under some stones in a cache 
as I left to make a short side trip into an unknown country. At the last 
moment I ran back and put the box about 14 feet up in the branch of a 
birch, as I thought it was possible a bear might break the box and scatter 
the contents in the river. On my return about a fortnight afterwards, 
the first thing I saw scattered on the ground was the contents of the 
cartridge box. About one-third of the brass cartridges had been chewed 
by three bears, and all the shot had rolled out. Their object was to reach 
the big grease wad over the powder, and these they had in many cases 
skilfully extracted. It was, indeed, a strange diet, and I have kept several 
of the cartridges as curious trophies. I have often wondered what would 
have happened if they had bitten on the cap. 
When the black bear first comes out in spring it feeds much on grass, 
roots, crocus, Indian potato, and any small mice or carrion it can find. 
In Manitoba the edges of some of the lakes in summer are blocked with 
masses of dead mayflies to a width of 6 feet and 6 inches deep, and these 
dead Ephemeridas are a favourite food of the black bear. A favourite spring 
food is the stinking arum or Indian turnip ( Arum triphyllum ), which no 
animal but a bear would ever touch. Bears also demolish hundreds of 
old stumps and rotten wood in search of ants and other insects. All along 
the Pacific slope there are numbers of rivers and streams all of which in 
September are choked with dead and dying salmon, and these form a 
regular food supply to the black bears, which come from all the neighbour- 
ing hills to feed upon them. In eastern rivers they devour large quantities 
of suckers and other spawning fish. In September and October they also 
eat enormous quantities of blackberries, raspberries and huckleberries. 
In Newfoundland, nearly all the bears that are shot are killed by being 
spied on the huckleberry patches by the watching Indians. 
Regions devastated by fire are sown again at once with berry-bearing 
plants by bears passing along and distributing their excrement, which is 
full of seeds, on the ground. They are also very partial to the comb and 
grubs in the nests of bees and wasps. 
In late autumn the black bear shows his skill as a climber, and invades 
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