Bear
the English name of the various species of plantigrade mammals belonging to the ursus and some neighboring genera. The term plantigrade, applied to the bears, intimates that they walk on the soles of their feet; not, like the digitigrade animals, on their toes. Though ha having six six incisor teeth in each jaw, like the rest of the carnivora, yet the tubercular crowns of the molar teeth show that their food is partly vegetable. They grub up roots, and, when they can obtain it, greedily devour honey. They hibernate in winter.
The best known species is ursus arctos, the brown bear. They are wild in this country, on the continent of Europe, and in Asia. Other species are the Syrian bear (ursus syriacus, which is the bear of Scripture); the American black bear (ursus americanus); the grizzly bear of the same continent (ursus ferox); and the Polar bear (ursus or thalassarctos maritimus), and others.
BEARD The earliest representative of the ursidæ, or bear family, known at present, does not belong to the typical genus ursus. It is called amphicyon, and is of Miocene age.
Of Post-pliocene bears, one, ursus priscus, seems the same as ursus ferox (the grizzly bear). Several bears, ursus spelæus, arctos, and others, have been found in caves, in England and elsewhere.
Of these, ursus spelæus, from the Greek spelaios a grotto, cavern, or pit, is the one called especially the cave bear. It is a giant species, occurring in the later rather than the earlier Postpliocene beds. In Stock Exchange parlance, a bear is one who contracts to sell on a specified day certain stock not belonging to him, at the market price then prevailing, on receiving imaginary payment for them at the rate which obtains when the promise was made. It now becomes his interest that the stock on which he has speculated should fall in price. The purchaser, called a "bull," sees it to his advantage to make the stock rise. The origin of the term is uncertain.
In astronomy, the word is applied to one or other of two constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, called respectively the Great Bear and the Little Bear. When the word Bear stands alone, it signifies Ursa Major.
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