dashes headlong from the cave to be killed, or to make good his escape, as the case may be.  Poking a bear out of a cave is rather a severe trial of one’s nervous system, and if anyone doubts that he has only to try it for himself, as it will perhaps show the individual that we seldom rightly estimate the amount of nerve which we often expect natives to show.  I think I was never more startled in my life than I was one day when I put my ramrod (it was of course in the muzzle loading days) into the very narrow mouth of a cave in which I thought there was little chance of Bruin being at home.  A she-bear however was within, and all the fiercer as she had cubs, but luckily she did not charge out, and I need hardly say that I promptly drew back.  Sometimes a cave may be so deep and tortuous that the bear cannot be got out with the aid of a pole, and to meet such cases I had stink balls made, as bears have very fine olfactory nerves and seem particularly to object to disagreeable smells.  These balls were composed of asafoetida, pig dung, and any other offensive ingredient that suggested itself to me at the time, and made up into about the size of a cricket ball and then dried in the sun.  The ball was, when required to drive a bear out of a cave, impaled on the end of a long pole and surrounded by dried grass, or any other inflammable material which was at hand, and this being ignited the pole was thrust as far as possible into the cave.  This I found to be a highly successful plan, and I may mention in passing that I have met with no account in the many sporting books I have read of this being done previously.  Sometimes large fires are lit in the mouth of a cave with the view of smoking a bear out, but this is rather a cruel process which I do not recommend.  In some cases of peculiarly shaped and situated caves it is, however, the only practicable plan, but where adopted the bear should not be put to more inconvenience than is necessary to drive him out.  A large fire should be lit at the entrance, and when the cave has got filled with smoke all the blazing fragments of wood should be removed from the entrance, and in doing this the people should talk loudly and make as much noise as possible, and afterwards retreat to a distance from the cave leaving the sportsman with his spare gun-carrier to sit just above the entrance to the cave.  The bear finding that, as he erroneously supposes, every one has gone away, and being naturally desirous of quitting such uncomfortable quarters will, after a short time, come cautiously out and may thus be easily shot.  It is very important to have a couple of bull-terriers when out bear shooting as they are most useful in bringing a wounded bear to bay.

In considering these remarks upon the various ways of getting bears out of caves it may be useful to show how not to attempt to get a bear out of a cave, and the connecting circumstances will also be useful to anyone who may be overtaken by a hill fire.