388 
THE BEAR. 
attack a sleeping man; and they sometimes 
take strange freaks of forbearance and attach¬ 
ment towards human beings, especially chil¬ 
dren. I recollect not many years ago hearing 
of a case which seems almost incredible. A 
little girl who was lost in the woods for two 
or three days, asserted, when she-was found, 
that she had slept every night with a bear. 
She declared that she lay down by a hollow 
log; that the bear came and lay down by her; 
that she was afraid at first, but the bear licked 
her face, and then she put her arms round 
his neck and went to sleep. A tame bear at 
Nancy, in Lorraine, during a severe winter, 
took a starving Savoyard boy under his 
protection, kept him in his arms while he 
slept, played with him, and shared his food 
with him, and, though he allowed the boy 
full liberty, furiously resented any attempt 
to take his protege from him by force. 
Nevertheless, it must be confessed that tame 
bears sometimes take fits of ferocity, and 
have been known treacherously to destroy 
the lives of those to whom they had seemed 
to be the most attached. 
“ Bears have the following general cha¬ 
racteristics. They have forty-two teeth, 
