Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/197

Rh they climb up trees without a branch to the height of sixty or seventy feet by simply digging their claws into the soft bark. The Karens, following their example, fill a haversack with bamboo pegs, and driving in one and standing on it, they insert others into the bark the whole way up; and I have seen them thus ascend the bole of a forest monster fully twenty-five feet in circumference, and without a branch for one hundred feet, after the huge honey-combs pendant on the lower lateral branches.

A large Bear will be about six feet in length, and weigh close on eight hundred pounds; not that I ever weighed one myself, but I have been told so by those who had. They seldom have more than a couple or, at the most, three cubs at a birth, and the little ones often ride on their mother's back. More people are killed annually in Assam by Bears than by Tigers. They are fond of rocky ground, and have their dens formed naturally by slabs of stone lying one on the top of the other; but in parts of Assam and Burma they lie on the open prairies in a dense patch of either long grass or in a thicket. Although Bears are very numerous in both countries, they seldom fall a prey to the sportsmen excepting in the hilly districts. When hunted on Elephants, they manage to evade the line, the noise made in forcing a way through the long grass gives them warning that their enemy man is nearing their lair, and they quietly shamble away. Why Bears should be so subject to cataract of the eyes I do not know, but it is a common disease amongst them. Elephants dislike Bears, and fear them more than they do Tigers.

The Burmese Bear, Ursus malayanus, has a glossy skin, with shortish hair, muzzle blackish, but face, mouth, and lower jaw a dirty white, throat black, dividing the white part just mentioned from a large heart-shaped white mark covering nearly the whole breast, with a large black spot in the centre, and a few minute black dots over the remaining portion; the lower part of this heart is continued by a white line between the fore legs, and widened out again on the belly into a large irregularly-shaped spot. The head is flattened and very short, with far more of a canine than an ursine expression. Ears very small, smooth, and round. It seldom exceeds four and a half feet in length. It is