Photo by J. W. McLellan] [Highbury.
POLAR BEAR.
This bear is the most formidable of all aquatic mammals. It is almost as much at home in the water as a seal.
The manœuvres of an ice-bear in the water are marvellous to watch. Though so bulky a beast, it swims, dives, rolls over and over, catches seals or fish, or plays both on and under the water with an ease and evident enjoyment which show that it is in its favourite element. One favourite game of the ice-bear is to lie on its back in the water, and then to catch hold of its hind toes with its fore feet, when it resembles a half-rolled hedgehog of gigantic size. It then rolls over and over in the water like a revolving cask. Its footsteps are absolutely noiseless, as the claws are shorter than in the land-bear's, and more muffled in fur. This noiseless power of approach is very necessary when it has to catch such wary creatures as basking seals. A very large proportion of the food formerly eaten by ice-bears in summer was probably putrid, as they were always supplied with a quantity of the refuse carcases of whales and seals left by the whaling-ships. This may account for the bad results to the sailors who ate the bears' flesh. Now the whaling industry is so little pursued that the bears have to catch their dinners for themselves, and eat fresh food.
Photo by the New York Zoological Society.
HALF-GROWN POLAR BEARS.
When young polar bears are brought to England or New York on board ship, they arrive with coats almost as yellow as a sponge. It takes a week's bathing to restore the pure white colour.
The Arctic explorer Nordenskiöld saw much of the ice-bears on his voyages, and left us what is perhaps the best description of their attempts to stalk men, mistaking them for other animals. "When the polar bear observes a man," he writes in his "Voyage of the Vega," "he commonly approaches him as a possible prey, with supple movements and a hundred zigzag bends, in order to conceal the direction he means to take, and to prevent the man feeling frightened. During his approach he often climbs up on to blocks of ice, or raises himself on his hind legs, in order to get a more extensive view. If he thinks he has to do with a seal, he creeps or trails himself forward on the ice, and is then said to conceal with his fore paws the only part of his body that contrasts with the white colour of the snow—his large black nose. If the man keeps quite still, the bear comes in this way so near that it can be shot at the distance of two gun-lengths, or killed with a lance, which the hunters consider safer."