Respecting the habits of the Grecian bear the ancients have left us some few facts which may be worth repeating. When it comes forth from the den,[766] where it has passed the winter, it is said to chew bits of wood, and to feed on snake-weed, wake-robin, or cuckoo-pint (arum maculatum[767]), which has a purgative power. These operations performed, its ravenous appetites immediately awake, and it commences its devastations in the farm-yard, the orchard and the apiary. Delighting greatly in honey it attacks and overthrows the hives which it tears to pieces in order to devour the combs, though Pliny[768] adduces another reason for this fact, exceedingly characteristic of that writer. He says that the bear, after his winter sleep, finding his eyes dim and his head heavy, applies to the bees as to skilful oculists, that in revenge for robbing them of their honey, sting him angrily about the face, which by letting much blood relieves him at once from his ophthalmia and his headache. The bear, it is well known, is omnivorous like man. He accordingly plunders the bean-fields, and feeds on every kind of pulse. In robbing orchards,[769] too, his courage and ability are great, being as I have said as complete an adept as a school-boy in climbing trees, out of which when he has satisfied himself he descends, like the aforesaid mischievous beast, feet foremost. When none of the delicacies above enumerated was within his reach, the bear would feed on ants, crabs, or any kind of vermin, but preferred of course the flesh of the larger animals, such as the stag, the wild boar, and the bull. His mode of taking his prey was curious. Upon the boar and stag he probably dropped from his hiding place in the trees, but the stratagem by which he usually got the bull into his power was this.[770] Throwing himself on the ground directly in his way he provoked the lord of the herd to gore him, upon which, seizing his horns, and fastening ravenously upon his shoulder, he brought him to the ground, where he fed upon his carcass at leisure. When flying from the more terrible face of man, the female usually drove her young before her, or taking them up in her mouth or on her back, she would endeavour to escape with them into the trees.[771] Footnote 766: Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 6. viii. 17. vi. 30. Ælian de Nat. Anim. vi. 3. Cf. Buffon, Hist. Nat. t. viii. p. 27. Footnote 767: This now we find is the food of swine. “Leaving Pyrgo (in Bœotia), we advanced along the plain to Eremo Castro; in our road we observed droves of pigs tearing up the ground for the roots of the cuckow-pint (arum maculatum) which was called by the swineherds δρακοντίο.”—Sibth. in Walp. i. 65. Footnote 768: Nat. Hist. viii. 54. Footnote 769: Aristot. Hist. Anim. viii. 5. Footnote 770: Ælian. de Nat. Anim. vi. 6. Aristot. ut sup. Footnote 771: Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 6. Ælian. de Nat. Anim. vi. 6.