When the Bear fights, it delivers rapid strokes with its armed paw, tearing and rending away everything that it strikes. A blow from a bear's paw has been several times known to strip the entire skin, together with the hair, from a man's head, and, when fighting with dogs, to tear its enemies open as if each claw were a chisel. Bears are capable of erecting themselves on their hinder limbs, and of supporting themselves in an upright position with the greatest ease. When attacked in close combat, they have a habit of rearing themselves upon their hinder feet--a position which enables them to deliver with the greatest effect the terrific blows with their fore paws, upon which they chiefly rely in defending themselves. With fearful ingenuity, the Bear, when engaged with a human foe, directs its attack upon the head of its antagonist, and, as previously stated, has been known to strike off the entire scalp with a single blow. [Illustration: A FAMILY-PARTY.] A hunter who had the misfortune to be struck down by a Bear--and the singular good fortune to afterwards escape from it--says, that when he was lying on the ground at the mercy of the angry beast, the animal, after biting him upon the arms and legs, deliberately settled itself upon his head and began to scarify it in the fiercest manner, leaving wounds eight and nine inches in length. Bears are the more terrible antagonists from their extreme tenacity of life, and the fearful energy which they compress into the last moment of existence, when they are suffering from a mortal wound. Unless struck in the heart or brain, the mortally-wounded Bear is more to be feared than if it had received no injury whatever, and contrives to wreak more harm in the few minutes that immediately precede its death, than it had achieved while still uninjured. Many a hunter has received mortal hurts by incautiously approaching a Bear, which lay apparently dead, but was in reality only stunned. [Illustration: bear] [Illustration: porcupine] THE PORCUPINE. Presumed identity of the Kippôd with the Porcupine--Habits of the Porcupine--the common Porcupine found plentifully in Palestine. Although, like the hedgehog, the Porcupine is not mentioned by name in the Scriptures, many commentators think that the word Kippôd signifies both the hedgehog and Porcupine.