[Bigtext-users] Ader to know just how Black Bruin looked in this, his seven

[Casstevens W. <mon...@mo...>]

 and mice have also denned up, so there is not much for bruin to do but
sleep. There is one weakness that I believe the bear always indulges
whenever he can, no matter in what clime he be found, and that is a love
for sweets, especially honey. He will dare the sharp bayonets of the
most angry swarm of bees or climb the worst tree, if he feels at all
certain that there will be honey after his pains. In some countries, he
damages a great many telephone and telegraph poles and wires by climbing
the poles in search of that swarm of bees, which he imagines he hears
humming, inside the pole. In the temperate zone bears mate in the summer
months and the young are born late in January, during hibernation.
Bear-cubs are very small babies for such large parents, weighing much
less in proportion to their dams than most other mammals. They are
blind, helpless and almost hairless. As the old bear is very fat when
they are born and they do nothing but sleep in the dark den, they grow
rapidly, so that when they are finally brought forth at the age of
perhaps four months, they have developed wonderfully and would hardly be
recognized as the tiny blind cubs of a few weeks before. When the old
bears first come forth from hibernation they eat very little for two or
three weeks. Their long fast and the inactivity of the vital organs have
greatly weakened the digestive parts, so they must have time in which to
recover, before they are made to do the hard work of digesting flesh and
bone. The bear, therefore, wisely contents himself with gr