When a vessel lies at anchor, a polar bear sometimes swims out to it, to inspect the visiting ship; it has also a special fancy for breaking open and searching stores of provisions, boats abandoned and covered over, and cabins of wrecked ships. One bear which had looted a provision depôt was found to have swallowed a quantity of sticking-plaster. The ice-bear has been met swimming at a distance of eighty miles from land, and with no ice in sight. This shows how thoroughly aquatic its habits and powers are. Polar bears do not hug their victims, like the brown bear, but bite, and use their immense feet and sharp claws. It has been said that when one catches a seal on the ice it will play with it as a cat does with a mouse. The size of these bears varies very much. Seven or eight feet from the tip of the nose to the tail is the usual length; yet they have been known to exceed even 13 feet in length. This would correspond to an immense difference in bulk and weight. An ice-bear was once found feeding on the body of a white whale, 15 feet in length, and weighing three or four tons. The whale could not have got on to the ice by itself, and it is difficult to imagine that any other creature except the bear could have dragged it there from the sea, where it was found floating. When hunting seals, polar bears will chase them in the water as an otter does a fish, but with what result is not known. Besides stalking them in the manner described above, they will mark the place at which seals are basking on the rim of an ice-floe, and then dive, and come up just at the spot where the seal would naturally drop into the water. Those shot for the sake of their skins are nearly all killed when swimming in the sea. The hunters mark a bear on an ice-floe, and approach it. The bear always tries to escape by swimming, and is pursued and shot through the head from the boat. When the females have a cub or cubs with them, they will often attack persons or boats which molest them; otherwise they do not willingly interfere with man, except, as has been said above, when they mistake men for seals or other natural prey.
Photo by G. W. Wilson & Co., Ltd.] [Aberdeen.
THE ICE-BEAR'S COUCH.
A favourite attitude of the polar bear is to lie stretched on its stomach, with the hind and fore legs extended flat. The head often lies between the fore paws. Notice the hair on the feet, which keeps the animal from slipping when on the ice.
The instances recorded of the affection shown by these animals for their young are somewhat pathetic. When the Carcase frigate, which was engaged on a voyage of Arctic discovery, was locked in the ice, a she-bear and two cubs made their way to the ship, attracted by the scent of the blubber of a walrus which the crew had killed a few days before. They ran to the fire, and pulled off some of the walrus-flesh which remained unconsumed. The crew then threw them large lumps of the flesh which were lying on the ice, which the old bear fetched away singly, and laid before her cubs as she brought it, dividing it, and giving each a share, and reserving but a small portion for herself. As she was fetching away the last piece, the sailors shot both the cubs dead, and wounded the dam. Although she could only just crawl to the place where the cubs lay, she carried the lump of flesh which she had last fetched away, and laid it before them; and when she saw that they refused to eat, laid her paws on them, and tried to raise them up, moaning pitifully. When she found she could not stir them, she went to some distance, and looked back, and then returned, pawing them all over and moaning. Finding at last that they were lifeless, she raised her head towards the ship and uttered a growl, when the sailors killed her with a volley of musket-balls.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SMALLER CARNIVORA.