An animal in Kamtschatka is called marmot by the Russian travellers: they say its skin is beautiful, and at a distance it resembles the plumage of a bird; and add, that it uses its fore-feet like a squirrel, and feeds on roots, berries, and cedar-nuts; the latter however seems to indicate an error, as the real cedar bears cones, and the other trees so called, berries.
There is another species which comes from the Cape of Good Hope; this was first spoken of by M. Allamand, but more fully described by M. Pallas, and M. Vosmaer, who had one of them alive at Amsterdam; he says it is known at the Cape by the name of the Rock Badger, merely because it lives under the earth and in rocks, but has no resemblance to that animal; and, as Kolbe justly remarks, that it resembles more the marmot than the badger, we have called it the Marmot of the Cape. M. Vosmaer observes in his description of it, that it was about the size of a rabbit, had a large belly, fine eyes, and black hair upon its eyebrows, above which it had a few long black hairs that turned towards the head, and long whiskers. Its colour was grey, or rather a yellowish brown intermixed with black hairs, much darker upon the head and back than upon the belly, which as well as the breast was whitish, and it had a white stroke across the shoulders which ended at the top of the fore-legs.
THE BEAR.
There is no animal so generally known, about which naturalists have differed so much as the bear, their doubts and even contradictions, with respect to the nature and manners of this animal, seem to have arisen from their not distinguishing the different species, and consequently ascribing to one the properties belonging to another. In the first place, the land-bear ([fig. 92.]) must not be confounded with the sea-bear, or as it is commonly called the white bear ([fig. 93.]), or bear of the frozen sea; these animals being very different both in the form of their bodies and natural dispositions. The land bears must be also distinguished into two species, the brown and the black, because having neither the same inclinations nor natural appetites, they cannot be considered as varieties of the same species. Besides, there are some land bears that are white, but which, although they resemble the sea-bear in colour, differ from it in every other particular. These white land-bears we meet with in Great Tartary, Muscovy, Lithuania, and other northern countries. It is not the rigour of the climate which renders them white during the winter, like the hares and ermines, for they are brought forth white and remain so all their lives. We ought, therefore, to consider them as a fourth species, if there were not also found bears with an intermixture of brown and white, which denotes an intermediate race between the white land-bear, and the brown or black, consequently the former is only a variety of one of those species.
Engraved for Barr’s Buffon.
FIG. 92. Brown Bear.