Again, in North America--in a very remote and sterile region lying to the westward of Hudson's Bay, and known as the Barren Grounds--a large brown bear has been observed by travellers and traders of the Fur Company, supposed to be identical with the European bear. This, however, is a doubtful point; and in all likelihood the bear of the Barren Grounds is a new species, only found in that desolate region. The brown bear is of solitary habits. During the summer season he roams about, growing fat upon roots, fruits, seeds, and wild honey--when he can procure it. At the approach of winter this animal has the singular habit of returning to his den, and there remaining dormant or torpid throughout the season of cold. During this prolonged slumber he takes no sustenance of any kind; and although exceedingly fat when going to rest, he comes forth in the spring-time as thin as a skeleton. The den is usually a cave or hollow tree; or, failing this, a _lair_, which the animal constructs for himself out of branches, lining it snugly with leaves and moss. The brown bear is a long-lived animal. Individuals have been known of the age of fifty years. The cubs when first born are not much larger than the puppies of a mastiff. The people of Kamtschatka hunt this species with great assiduity, and obtain from it many of the comforts and necessaries of life. The skins are used for their beds and coverlets, for their caps, gloves, and boots. They manufacture from it harness for their dogs. From the intestines they make masks for their faces, to protect them from the glare of the sun; and they also use the latter stretched over their windows as a substitute for glass. The flesh and fat are among the most esteemed dainties of a Kamtschatkan _cuisine_. Even the shoulder-blades are used as sickles for cutting grass. The Laplanders, also--of whose cold country the brown bear is an inhabitant--have a great esteem for this animal. They regard its prowess as something wonderful, alleging that it has the strength of ten men, and the sense of twelve! The name for it, in their language, signifies the dog of God. The _White_, or _Polar bear_, is, perhaps, the most interesting of the whole family: not so much on account of his superior size--since the brown and the grizzly are sometimes as large as he--but rather from his singular habits, and the many odd stories told about him, dining the last fifty years, by whalers and Arctic explorers. To describe the appearance of the Polar bear would be superfluous. Everybody has seen either a living individual in a menagerie, or a stuffed skin of one in a museum; and the long, low, tail-less body--with outstretched neck and sharp projecting snout--covered with a thick coat of white hair, renders it impossible to mistake the Polar bear for any other animal.