The small bruang or Malayan bear (_Ursus malayanus_) is of a jet-black colour, with a white semilunar mark on the chest, and attains a length of 4½ ft. Its food consists almost solely of vegetables and honey, but the latter is its favourite food,--the extreme length and pliability of the tongue enabling it to scoop out the honeycombs from the hollows of trees. It is found in the Malay Peninsula and Islands, and is readily tamed.
Not much larger than the Malay bear is the South American spectacled bear of the Andes (_U. ornatus_), distinguished from all the rest by the presence of a perforation in the lower end of the humerus, and hence sometimes separated as _Tremarctus_. It is black, with tawny rings round the eyes, and white cheeks, throat and chest. A second race or species exists.
The sloth-bear (_Melursus labiatus_ or _ursinus_) is distinguished by the absence of one pair of upper incisors, the small size of the cheek-teeth and the very extensile character of the lips. It is also known as the aswail and the honey-bear, the last name being also given to the Malay bear and the kinkajou. It is about the size of the brown bear, is covered with long, black hair, and of extremely uncouth aspect. It inhabits the mountainous regions of India, is readily tamed and is the bear usually exhibited by the Hindu jugglers. The food consists of fruits, honey and white ants.
Fossil remains of extinct bears first occur in strata of the Pliocene age. Those of the great cave bear (_Ursus spelaeus_), found abundantly in certain caverns of central Europe and Asia, show that it must have exceeded in size the polar bear of the present day. Its remains are also found in similar situations in Britain associated with those of an allied species (_Ursus priscus_).
[1] Lydekker, in _Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1897, p. 412.
BEAR-BAITING and BULL-BAITING, sports formerly very popular in England but now suppressed on account of their cruelty. They took place in arenas built in the form of theatres which were the common resort even of cultivated people. In the bear-gardens, which are known to have existed since the time of Henry II., the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. Erasmus, writing (about 1500) from the house of Sir Thomas More, spoke of "many herds of bears maintained in the country for the purpose of baiting." Sunday was the favourite day for these sports. Hentzner, writing in 1598, describes the bear-garden at Bankside as "another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of Bulls and Bears. They are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other, and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired." He also describes the whipping of a blinded bear, a favourite variation of bear-baiting. For a famous baiting which took place before Queen Elizabeth in 1575 thirteen bears were provided. Of it Robert Laneham (fl. 1575) wrote, "it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies' approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy." The famous "Paris Garden" in Southwark was the chief bear-garden in London. A Spanish nobleman of the time, who was taken to see a pony baited that had an ape tied to its back, expressed himself to the effect that "to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screaming of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable." Butler describes a bear-baiting at length in the first canto of his _Hudibras_.
