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Sect VI. Transitional habits

on the margin of water, & then dashing in, like a King-fisher after on a fish: Iin our own country the larger titmouse (Parus major) may be continually seen climbing branches almost like a creeper or woodpecker: it often like a shrike kills bird small birds by blows on the head, & I have many times seen & heard it, hammering on a branch & breaking the seeds of the yew, like a notch nut hatch.

In N. America a the black bear has been was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, the minute crustaceans swimming on the surface insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of minute crustaceans insects were constant, & there did not already exist in any the region better adapted competitors, I can see no difficulty in a race of Bears being rendered by natural selection more & more aquatic in habits & structure, with larger & larger mouth, till a monstrous a creature was produced as monstrous in size & structure as a whale.) though feeding on such minute prey so minute. )

As we see that species the individuals of the same a species sometimes follow habits widely different from those of their congeners, own & other species of the same genus; we might expect on our

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[in the hand of Henrietta Litchfield:]

Origin of Species

Bear turning into Whale turning To be kept
H E.L.

[It is well known that Darwin removed most of the passage about the black bear eating insects from the water like a whale after the first edition of Origin (see the Variorum). At least five of the reviews of Origin criticised or mocked Darwin over the passage. The Dublin Review remarked: "This is a rare instance with Mr. Darwin, of a wish to accept a fact because it suits his theory." (p. 64) However, the source Darwin cited is very explicit and detailed:

"This was in the month of June, long before any fruit was ripe, for the want of which they then fed entirely on water insects, which in some of the lakes we crossed that day were in astonishing multitudes*.
The method by which the Bears catch those insects is by swimming with their mouths open, in the same manner as the whales do, when feeding on the sea-spider. There was not one of the Bears killed that day, which had not its stomach as full of those insects (only) as ever a hog's was with grains, and when cut open, the stench from them was intolerable.  
* The insects here spoken of are of two kinds; the one is nearly black, its skin hard like a beetle, and not very unlike a grasshopper, and darts through the water with great ease, and with some degree of velocity. The other sort is brown, has wings, and is as soft as the common cleg-fly. The latter are the most numerous; and in some of the lakes such quantities of them are forced into the bays in gales of wind, and there pressed together in such multitudes, that they are killed, and remain there a great nuisance; for I have several times, in my inland voyages from York Fort, found it scarcely possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of those insects, which  in some places were lying in putrid masses to the depth of two or three feet.  It is more than probable, that the Bears occasionally feed on these dead insects."

Hearne, Samuel. 1795. A journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay, to the Northern Ocean, undertaken by order of the Hudson's Bay Company, for the discovery of copper mines, a north west passage, &c. in the years 1769, 1770, 1771, & 1772. London, p. 370.]