Note 17 — Chapter IV

In the New York Medical Repository, vol. 5, page 343-4, we find the following curious facts concerning the mode of generation in the American bear.

“The singular departure from the common course of nature in the procreation of the opossum and the shark, are already known; but the manner in which the fœtus is matured by the female bear is not so generally understood. The following information was given to Mr. Franklin, senator of the United States from North Carolina, by the hunters. This animal hybernates, and, during the winter, retires to hollow trees and caverns, but does not become torpid, or sink into the sleeping state. Though found often in great numbers on the frontier settlements, and frequently killed and eaten by the inhabitants, there has never been an instance of a female killed in a pregnant condition, or big with young. The reason is, that almost immediately after conception, the fœtus, while shapeless, and resembling merely a small animated lump, is excluded from the womb. Thus born, and exposed to the open air, it has no connection with the teat like the opossum, nor with an egg like the shark. There is no trace of a placenta nor umbilical vessels. The growth of this rudiment of a future bear is supposed to be promoted by licking; and the saliva of the dam, or some other fluid from her mouth, appears to afford it nourishment. In the course of time, and under such management, the limbs and organs are evolved, the surface covered with hair, and the young cub at length rendered capable of attending its parent. Thus far the inquiries of the hunters have gone. The facts are so curious, that the subject is highly worthy of further investigation. And when the entire history of the process of generation in this animal shall be known, new light will be shed upon one of the most obscure parts of physiology. It is to be hoped that gentlemen whose opportunities are favourable to the prosecution of this inquiry, will furnish the learned world shortly with the whole of these mysterious phenomena.”—Cramer.