first sportsman has time to load again, and in this manner they fire and load alternately, till they have dispatched their game.

Mode of tracing the bear in summer.

There is still another curious circumstance attending the Russian bear hunt, and that is the manner the peasants trace them out in summer, by what may be called, in sporting language, their form, with the method they have of judging of his size by it, although, properly speaking, it is only the form of his hinder parts, and not of his whole body.

The bear is fond of corn, and makes a great havoc among it by the quantity he consumes, and the quantity he treads under foot; but the manner of his feeding on it is very remarkable, especially as it is in that act, he leaves what the peasants call his form, in the earth, and by which they trace him from one part to another during his feeding season.

On this animals finding a field of corn to his taste, either in the milky or ripe state of the grain, he chooses out a soft spot amongst it, free from stones, where he sits down on his buttocks, and eats all round him as far as he can reach, turning on his buttocks as a center; so as to make a hole or print in the ground, round and smooth like a large bason. This ascertains to the peasant the size of his hind quarters, and measuring from that to the cropped circle in the corn all around, they judge of his length; as the lazy animal never quits his seat to eat further than the utmost reach of his muzzle and paws, but removes to a fresh spot, when all is consumed near him, and begins the same business over again. These prints or forms, then, by their comparative freft,

March 6 have soon overtaken them, and have had ample revenge, as he could swim three times faster than they.

They immediately ran to the house for guns, and when they came back, saw him sitting in the boat, and dipping one of his paws now and then in the water, and washing his wounds; on which, levelling their pieces, they fhot him dead.

The landlord of the house I put up at, when this story was told, fhewed me one of the paws of this bear, which, on account of its great size, he kept as a fhow; and added, that he was as big as any yearling calf. So that one may easily conceive the havock. and destruction committed in a country so much infested with such monstrous and ravenous animals, especially on fheep, the simplest and silliest of all. creatures, who fall an easy prey to beasts of far less strength and size. Many of these harmless, yet useful animals, were destroyed by bears in this very neighbourhood; where one man sustained the lofs of thirty of his sheep within a fhort space; and even young cattle often were devoured, and carried off by them; yet they prefer swine, when they can get them, to any other meat.

SIR,

FRAGMENTS OF LORD BACON.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

To the Editor of the Bee.

DURING one of my late pedestrian journeis, to examine and glean the beauties and curiosities of this interesting island of Britain, I happened to be enter

tained at the house of a venerable old widow lady, in the county of Brecknock, the heirefs of a small Highland estate, to which fhe had unluckily failed in bringing an heir.

In her hospitable, but decaying mansion, there was a portrait upon board, of no great excellence, save for its being an original of the great lord Bacon.

As I was gazing with great eagerness on this portrait, the good lady said to me, "You seem Sir to be a great admirer of lord Bacon, when you can fix so ravenously upon that poor picture of his person."

Madam, (replied I,) how can I but doat upon the fhell that contained such a wonderful kernel!' My grandfather (rejoined the lady,) by my mother's side of the house, was a Rawley; and from him this picture came down to me, with a box of old papers, most of which have been used in the family for domestic purposes, as they lay all higgledy piggledy, and seemed to be nothing but jottings, and in a hand quite illegible. However, I gathered from these papers, that they were gotten at the same time with the picture, as the parson could here and there decypher, in the antick writing, the names of Bacon and Rawley; so I used no more of these papers, but made the parson look more attentively at them, who advised me to keep them, as they might contain some hints about my estate; and that he could trace out somewhat that seemed to relate to the good estate of the church." Upon this, I asked the lady's permifsion to exa. mine the box, which fhe very frankly granted.

5thly, In the rational, useful, and amusing employment of leisure.

6thly, In urbanity and politeness of manners, with due regard to our own interests.

7thly, In the habit of attention and observation, with respect to the operations of nature, and of society.

8thly, In the cultivation of such habits as terminate in an amiable, tranquil, and respectable old age.

9thly, And lastly, in a philosophical and religious preparation for death.

FRAGMENTS OF LORD BACON.

Art of Life.

It was a wise saying of the prince of physicians, and worthy of especiall note, that errors, in the first concoction, are seldom to be removed by a second; and soe it is in the regiment of health.

Habits of eating, drinking, and other corporeal pleasures, being once established by frequent usage, are with great difficulty superseded by others that are more salutiferous; which difficulty is exaggerated by the well known propensenefs of youthful natures to food of a sapid or high flavou red quality, to liquors that are potent or saccharine, and to pleasures of all kinds that are violent.

The foundation, or plattform, therefore, of the art of life, must have been laid, I will not saye in the craddle, but certainly in the nursery of children, by judicious parents, and wise preceptors; who, by inclining their pupills to the uncontaminated use of

what our physcians verie strangely call the non naturals, doe fortify and secure that Magna Charta of human happiness, so pithily abridged by the poet, "Mens sana in corpore sano."

"Butter and honey fhall hee eat, (sayeth the prophet of the Mesiah,) that hee may know to distin-. guish the good from the evill;" and certain it is, that as in the stomach are placed, and still more adjoining unto it, so many nerves of exquisite sensibility and sympathy, with the whole frame of man, soe every cause of ill coction or indigestion, must, therein disturb the intellectual functions, and produce moral pravities never to be removed afterward by the power of humane reason.

Now in this, (not to speak of the grand reward that is to be looked for from the virtue of temperance,) wee may observe true Epicurism; since, even in our sensual dayes, the strength of delight is in its seldomnefs, and its abasement and destruction in its frequency and satiety.

Healthful and temperate poverty, hath the start: of nauseating luxury; and the honest well earned appetite of excercise finds in one wholesome dish, the sum of the far fetched dainties of Lucullus. Is it, not also to be credited, that by due observance of the rules of temperance, and the regiment of our passions, humane life may not only be rendered much more rationall and delightfull, but moreover greatly prolonged, to a term (perhaps) of which at present wee have no conception?

From Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, Avicenna, and all who have written most sagaciously and experi