[368] “For Beares they be common, being a great black kind of Beare, which be most fierce in Strawberry time, at which time they have young ones; at this time likewise they will goe upright like a man, and clime trees, and swim to the Islands: which if the Indians see, there will be more sportful Beare bayting than Paris Garden can afford. For seeing the Beares take water, an Indian will leape after him, where they goe to water cuffes for bloody noses, and scratched sides; in the end the man gets the victory, riding the Beare over the watery plaine till he can beare him no longer.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 17.) “He makes his Denn amongst thick Bushes, thrusting in here and there store of moss, which being covered with snow and melting in the daytime with heat of the Sun, in the night is frozen into a thick coat of Ice; the mouth of his Den is very narrow, here they lye single, never two in a Den all winter. The Indian as soon as he finds them, creeps in upon all four, seizes with his left hand upon the neck of the sleeping Bear, drags him to the mouth of the Den, where with a club or small hatchet in his right hand he knocks out his brains before he can open his eyes to see his enemy.” (Two Voyages, p. 91.) Wood adds that bear’s flesh was “accounted very good meete, esteemed of all men above Venison.” Clayton says that “their flesh is commended for a very rich sort of Pork.” (Virginia, III. Force’s Tracts No. 12, p. 37.) “Beares there be manie towardes the sea-coast, which the Indians hunt most greedily; for indeed they love them above all other their flesh, and therefore hardly sell any of them unto us, unles upon large proffers of copper, beads and hatchetts. We have eaten of them, and they are very toothsome sweet venison, as good to be eaten as the flesh of a calfe of two yeares old; howbeit they are very little in comparison of those of Muscovia and Tartaria.” (Strachey’s Historie, p. 123.) See, also, Josselyn’s New England’s Rarities, pp. 13-14, and Two Voyages, pp. 91-2.
[369] The well-known Muskrat or Musquash (Fiber zibethicus) of our ponds. The “stones” are the oder glands. In respect to Cunny, see supra [204], note 2.
[370] The Porcupine is the Canadian Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus).
[371] The Hedgehogg is the same as the Porcupine, the author being in error in regarding it as “of the like nature to our English Hedgehoggs.” The English Hedgehog belongs to a very different order of mammals, and has no representative in America.
[372] The Conyes are Hares, the small ones of the “Southerne parts” being the little Gray Hare or Wood Rabbit (Lepus sylvaticus) of southern New England. Those of “the North” are the Varying Hare (Lepus Americanus), or White Rabbit, which is brown in summer and white in winter. The reference to black ones is an error, wild black hares being unknown except in cases of Melanism, which are of extremely rare occurrence. We have no species of hare which is black. Rabbit, it may be added, is a name not strictly applicable to any indigenous mammal of America, it being the vernacular specific designation of an Old World species of hare.
[373] The “Squirils of three sorts” are (1) the Gray Squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis); (2) the Red Squirrel, or Chickaree (S. Hudsonius); (3) the Flying Squirrel (Sciuropterus volucellus). A fourth kind, the Striped Squirrel, or Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) is not mentioned. The “batlike winges” are of course neither batlike, nor even wings at all, but merely a narrow furred membrane extending along the sides of the body, from the fore to the hind limbs.
[374] [and] See supra, [111], note 1.
[375] “1639. May, which fell out to be extream hot and foggie, about the middle of May, I kill’d within a stones throw of our house, above four score Snakes, some of them as big as the small of my leg, black of colour, and three yards long, with a sharp horn on the tip of their tail two inches in length.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 22-3.)
[376] Mr. J. H. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s ascowke is Eliot’s askook, R. Williams’s askùg, ‘a snake.’ In Zeifberger’s Delaware, achgook; whence (through Heckewelder) Cooper’s Chingachgook, ‘the Great Serpent,’ in the Last of the Mohicans.”
[377] Williams, in his Key, gives the name as Sések. See, also, Mr. Trumbull’s note in his edition of the Key (p. 130), in the publications of the Narragansett Society. Wood gives it as seasicke. (Prospect, p. 86.)