Bears and Bulls.
--The singular epithets of "bears" and "bulls" were first applied to speculators in stocks on the London Exchange about 1834. When two parties contract, the one to deliver and the other to take stocks on a future day at a specified price, it is the interest of the delivering party, in the intervening period, to depress stocks, and of the receiving party to raise them. The former is styled a "bear," in allusion to the habit of that animal to pull things down with his paws, and the latter a "bull," from the custom of that beast to throw an object up with his horns.
