times the big bear is a grubber in the ground, an eater of insects,
roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to
overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the
small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other.
It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless
woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly
they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to
gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to
satisfy the cravings of so huge a bulk. The sign of a bear's work is, of
course, evident to the most unpracticed eye; and in no way can one get a
better idea of the brute's power than by watching it busily working
for its breakfast, shattering big logs and upsetting boulders by sheer
strength. There is always a touch of the comic, as well as a touch of
the strong and terrible, in a bear's look and actions. It will tug and
pull, now with one paw, now with two, now on all fours, now on its
hind legs, in the effort to turn over a large log or stone; and when it
succeeds it jumps round to thrust its muzzle into the damp hollow and
lap up the affrighted mice or beetles while they are still paralyzed by
the sudden exposure.

The true time of plenty for bears is the berry season. Then they feast
ravenously on huckleberries, blueberries, kinnikinnic berries, buffalo
berries, wild plums, elderberries, and scores of other fruits. They
often smash all the bushes in a berry patch, gathering the fruit with
half-luxurious, half-laborious greed, sitting on their haunches, and
sweeping the berries into their mouths with dexterous paws. So absorbed
do they become in their feasts on the luscious fruit that they grow
reckless of their safety, and feed in broad daylight, almost at midday;
while in some of the thickets, especially those of the mountain
haws, they make so much noise in smashing the branches that it is a