The Bossier banner., 1893-05-18
RRuIN AS a SEALER.
How the Polar B-ar Secures an Occaslona
Feast.

Feast.
Like conditions produce similar ha bits
in men and animals. During the cold
and darkness of the polar winter in
Greenland there are no other substances
than ice AMI snow that can be used as
building materials and no possibility of
making extended journeys to procure
better Consequently the Esquimaux,
or, as they are now called, 1nnuits,
build, as is we'll known, their winter
habitatious of ice and snow.
The Greenland seal does the same, for
the temperature of the reenland WIN
ter is too severe for her unshel' cred
young. Breaking hole through
thick, the female seal digs out
with her fipper a spacc sufficient
for her purpose, space which
she forms into dome-shapei apart
ment resembling the interior Of an In.
mutt hut Here the young sell is born,
and here it rests upon its ice-shelf until
the feeble arctic sun NETS away the
snow that shelters an protects it, after
which it is old enough to take care OF
itself.
One of the most incomprehensible
circumstances connected with this seal
nursery is the manner in which the
mother is able to feed her baby. Diving
through the hole, which she always
keeps clear, breaking the new ice as
soon as it forms, she travels for miles,
and is not only abe to return directly
to the hole near which her young one
awaits her, but catches fish in the utter
darkness, below many feet of ice and
snow, of the water in which she swims.
How this is possible is an un solved
problem in natural history. Her nur-
sery is we'll hidden. Above her stretch
miles upon miles of untrodden snow,
that betrays no sign of her retreat, ex-
cept very small aperture, from which
issues thin and almost invisible
stream of warm vapor, the breath Of the
seals.
The unaidcd intelligence of nan would
be unable to discover a seal iglu, as the
nursery of these animals is called. The
Innuits discover it by means of their
dogs. The white bear finds it out for
himself. When he encounters "blow-
hole" or breathiny y-hole, he not only
digs about it with all the might he has,
but leaps up and down, using his pom
derous weight to crush in the
snow that roofs the seals iglu. Hav-
ing effected an entrance, the savage
housebrealxer catches the baby seal, the
mother easily escaping before he can
get t. her lie now commits a cruel
deed-so blrborous and fendish 4
stratagem, it would seem that no ami
NAL but min could be guilty of it.
Catching the helpless little scal-baby
by one tlipper, he deliberately reaches
down and plays it about in the water
beneath the ice, in order to tempt it's
mother within reach. The fisher is al
ways successful.
Drawn by internal love and solici-
cue of her offspring, the bear catches
her with his disengaged claw, and gets
| q supply of meat that satisfies even his
| voracious appetite, AMI enables him 10
| live while without fool. for with
bears AMI InnuitS in Greenland, it is
often long time between meals.
The Innuits themselves have learned
| this trick of the white bear. When d
young seal is captured, cord is at
tached t. a hind fiipper, and the little
creature is let down through the ice,
while the hunter watches the opening
| in the ice, ready to spear the mother as
she appears to help her little one.--N.