Polar bear
Polar bear
Thisformidable animal is generally found within the polar circle. It is a land animal, yet it depends upon the sea for its subsistence. It preys principally upon seals, young walruses and whales, and upon those foxes and wolves whichsometimes seek their food among the ice. Its size varies, being from eight to twelve feet long, and weighing from 900 to 1600 pounds. His fur is thick and very long, and, like the feathers of water birds, cannot be wet by almost any exposure to water. He swims at the rate of three miles an hour. He cannot climb trees like other bears, nor does he need so to do, as his habitation is among the icebergs. He is a very formidable and powerful animal, and when attacked, makes desperate resistance.
From the nature of their food, the flesh of the polar bear is rank and fishy, though not unwholesome. The fat resembles tallow, and melts into a transparent oil, which has no offensive smell. The skin is very serviceable, as well as handsome, for a variety of domestic purposes, and it is an article of considerable value to the people of the cold northern regions. The Greenlanders pull it off whole, and make a sack of it, into which they creep, and find a warm and comfortable bed. The natives of Hudson’s Bay make very handsome and pliable garments of these skins.
The Polar Bear may be considered as the most interesting of all bears. Much is said of its great strength, and power of enduring hunger and cold; of the peculiarity of its form and appearance; of the perils and privations to which it must often be exposed; of its great ferocity and daring when attacked, and of its strong attachment to its young. Nothing but death can stop the attentions of the female to her cubs. When they are wounded, she will fondle them, turn them over, lick them, offer them food, and pay them even more tender attentions than some human beings bestow upon their offspring; and when she finds all her efforts unavailing, she makes most piteous moans.
The White Bear is found in the polar regions of both continents.
The Boy and his Mittens.—I was going around the corner of Park street church, in February, 1835. It was the morning of one of those days when the thermometer was hovering about the chill point of zero. I chanced to notice a small boy, standing with his back to the basement wall of the church; his cheeks glistening in the keen wind, the tears flowing down his face, and a kind of blubbering sound issuing from his mouth. His little red hands were bare, but in one of them he held a pair of mittens. He was the picture of distress and imbecility. I went up to him, and asked him why he was crying. “My fingers are cold,” said he. “But why don’t you put on your mittens?” said I. “Oh, because my fingers are so cold!” said he. “But can’t you put them on?” said I. “Oh yes, Icanput them on,” said the boy, “but it hurts.”
“The child is father of the man,” thought I. This boy, here, in a matter of his fingers, is acting precisely as many men act in regard to matters of the deepest importance. Rather than bear the slight pain of putting on his mittens, he will run the risk of freezing his fingers. And when I see a man spending his time in idleness, and thus laying up a prospect of future poverty and distress, rather than work and be industrious,I think of the boy and his mittens. When I see a man indulging in a habit of tippling, or any other bad practice,because it is hard to leave off, I think of the boy and his mittens.
Idleness.—If the intellect requires to be provided with perpetual objects, what must it be with the affections? Depend upon it, the most fatal idleness is that of the heart; and the man who feels weary of life may be sure that he does not love his fellow-creatures as he ought.