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112 of obtaining food. The chief food of the polar bear is seals, preferably the floe-rat (Phoca fœtida). A bear has been seen lying stretched on its belly at the edge of a floe, watching intently the water till a floe-rat coming to the surface has put his head out for a breath and look out: no sooner had the seal's head appeared than one fell stroke with the heavy paw of the bear landed its prey, stunned, on to the floe.

During the winter-time, when the sea gets more or less frozen up into one continuous field of ice, bears are constantly wandering about in the vicinity of cracks in the ice, or near the breathing-holes which the seals keep open all the winter by constantly coming in and out of them. It is very doubtful if a bear ever catches a seal sleeping; it is by long and patient waiting at a seal's hole, and by strategy and stalking that the seal falls a victim to the bear. The bear's skill as a stalker is well instanced by an incident that nearly deprived Nansen of his companion Johansen, during their journey from the Fram to Franz Josef Land across the Polar Basin. Before either of them or even their two dogs were aware of its presence, a bear had felled Johansen by his heavy paw. "The bear," says Nansen in his Farthest North, "must have followed our track like a cat, and, covered by ice-blocks, have slunk up while we were clearing the ice from