BEAR VS. HORSE : EQUALITY VS. ARISTOCRACY. 189 
The she bear is in the habit of taking one of her little ones under 
each arm when she is about to leap some dangerous passage — an 
impetuous torrent, or precipitous ravine ; and it is only in these em- 
barrassments that she shows a ferocious and unsociable character. 
The true antitype of the Bear — emblem of savage life and 
equality — is the Horse — emblem of the gentry and of aristocratic 
pride. No two beasts are known which detest each other more 
cordially than the horse and the bear ; the hatred of the bear for 
the grenadiers of the National Guard is a sentiment less profound 
and of less distant date. The grizzly bear of California and the 
Eocky Mountains, the most dangerous and most powerful bear 
of the species, has sworn, it is said, deadly war to the horse, and 
attacks him everywhere, free or with a rider. It is said however, 
that there have been few cases in which a horseman, after the 
sacrifice of his steed, has had to complain of the ingratitude, or 
the ill treatment of a grizzly bear. 
Zoologists and hunters have long inquired without a satisfactory 
answer, the causes of this implacable hatred which the bear has 
sworn against the horse, and vice versa. 
Analogy answers with its characteristic simplicity and large 
common sense : the animal symbolic of independence and equality 
is the born enemy of the animal symbolic of the gentleman ; the 
gentleman, that is to say, the oppressive and privileged class, 
which exploits the conquered, and obliges them to work for it. 
It is certainly very simple, this explanation of the antipathy of 
the bear for the horse, but still there is no member of any learned 
body whatever who could have given it to us. It is one of my 
favorite tricks to tease a scientific man, by proposing to him insid- 
ious questions like these : Why does the cat lose size in domes- 
ticity, while the rabbit grows larger 
When the learned man has perplexed himself for a week, and 
is ready to bite off his tongue : ‘‘ My dear friend,’^ I say to him 
with kindness, ‘‘ the cat is an emblem of the thief and of the idle 
class ; the rabbit an emblem of the victimized laborer in the soil.’' 
It is true.” “ To accept domesticity, is to recognize the author- 
ity of man.” ‘‘ Certainly.” Now authority, however badly it 
is constituted, cannot do less than cut the claws of the thief and 
