However ferocious a bear may be, she is also capable of a large and generous affection. She is at once a fond mother, a constant friend and, if one may so express it, a magnanimous foe. Her devotion to her young is proverbial. She possesses the strongest maternal instincts, and when to her easily roused ferocity the fury of these instincts is added, it may be imagined what the violence of her attack will be. Any one who threatens the safety of her cubs does so at his peril. The constancy of her friendship is shown by the following curious case, related by Brehm. He tells us of a little boy who crept one night for warmth and shelter into the cage of an extremely savage bear. The latter, instead of devouring the child, took him under its protection, kept him warm with the heat of its body, and allowed him to return every night to its cage. By-and-by the poor boy died from smallpox, and the bear, utterly disconsolate, henceforth refused all food, and soon followed its little _protégé_ to the grave. But the bear is kind—_effusively_ kind, even to its enemies. In the manner of its attack it does not fell them to the ground with one blow of its paw like the lion, nor seize them with its teeth like the dog. It _hugs_ them. It embraces them with its powerful fore-limbs with a great: show of affection, and continues the squeeze so long that the poor wretched victims are suffocated. Bruin does nothing by halves. The advice of old Polonius is followed to the very letter:— "The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel." He _does_ grapple them. He may give great attention to the friendships of life, but he does not forget to _embrace_ his enemies. With respect to the bear mentioned in the Bible, we may note three points. I.—ITS KIND.