When the bear is merely wounded, it is very dangerous to attempt to kill him with such a weapon as a knife or tomahawk, or indeed any thing which may bring one within his reach. In this way hunters and others have paid very dearly for their rashness, and barely escaped with their lives; the following instance may serve as an example of the danger of such an enterprise: ‘Mr. Mayborne, who resides in Ovid township, Cayuga county, between the Seneca and Cayuga lakes, in the state of New-York, went one afternoon through the woods in search of his horses, taking with him his rifle and the only load of ammunition he had in the house. On his return home, about an hour before dusk, he perceived a very large bear crossing his path, on which he instantly fired, and the bear fell, but immediately recovering his legs, made for a deep ravine a short way onwards. Here he tracked him awhile by the blood, but night coming on, and expecting to find him dead in the morning, he returned home. A little before daybreak the next morning, taking a pitchfork and hatchet, and his son, a boy of ten or eleven years of age, with him, he proceeded to the place in quest of the animal. The glen or ravine into which he had disappeared the evening before, was eighty or ninety feet from the top of the bank to the brook below; down this precipice a stream of three or four yards in breadth is pitched in one unbroken sheet, and, forming a circular basin or pool, winds away among the thick underwood. ‘After reconnoitering every probable place of retreat, he at length discovered the bear, who had made his way up the other side of the ravine, as far us the rocks would admit, and sat under a projecting cliff, steadfastly eyeing the motions of his enemy. Mayborne, desiring his boy to remain where he was, took the pitchfork, and, descending to the bottom, determined from necessity to attack him from below. The bear kept his position until the man approached within six or seven feet, when on the instant, instead of being able to make a stab with the pitchfork, he found himself grappled by the bear, and both together rolled towards the pond, at least twenty or twenty-five feet, the bear biting on his left arm, and hugging him almost to suffocation. By great exertion he thrust his right arm partly down his throat, and in that manner endeavored to strangle him, but was once more hurled headlong down through the bushes, a greater distance than before, into the water. Here, finding the bear gaining on him, he made one desperate effort, and drew the animal’s head partly under water, and repeating his exertions, at last weakened him so much, that calling to his boy, who stood on the other side, in a state little short of distraction for the fate of his father, to bring him the hatchet, he sunk the edge of it by repeated blows into the brain of the bear. This man, although robust and muscular, was scarcely able to crawl home, where he lay