en hard, they could not dig for roots, and under the deep covering
of snow they might search in vain for their masts and berries. As to
foraging on birds or other quadrupeds, bears are not fitted for that.
They are not agile enough for such a purpose.

They will eat both when they can catch them; but they cannot always
catch them; and if they had no other resource in the snowy season the
bears would certainly starve. To provide them against this time of
scarcity, nature has furnished them with the singular power of
somnolence. Indeed, that this is the purpose is easily proved. It is
proved by the simple fact that those bears belonging to warm latitudes,
as the Bornean, Malayan, and even the black American of the Southern
States, do not hybernate at all. There is no need for them to do so.
Their unfrozen forests furnish them with food all the year round; and
all the year round are they seen roaming about in search of it. Even in
the Arctic lands the polar bear keeps afoot all the year; his diet not
being vegetable, and therefore not snowed up in winter. The female of
this species hides herself away; but that is done for another purpose,
and not merely to save herself from starvation.

That the stock of fat, which the bear lays in before going to sleep, has
something to do with subsisting him, is very evident from the fact that
it is all gone by the time he awakes. Then or shortly afterwards,
master Bruin finds himself as thin as a rail; and were he to look in a
glass just then, he would scarce recognise himself, so very different is
his long emaciated carcass from that huge plump round body, that two
months before he could scarce squeeze through the entrance to his cave!

Another great change comes over him during his prolonged sleep. On
going to bed, he is not only very fat, but also very lazy; so much so
that the merest tyro of a hunter can then circumvent and slay him.
Naturally a well-disposed animal--we are speaking only of the brown bear
(_ursus arctos_) though the remark will hold good of several other
species--he is at this period more than usually civil and soft-tempered.
He has found a sufficiency of vegetable food which is more congenial to
his taste than animal substances; and he will not molest living creature
just then, if living creature will only let him alone. Aroused from his
sleep, however, he shows a different disposition. He appears as if he
had got up "wrong side foremost." His head ach