In the Ainu house, furniture in our sense of the word is largely lacking. Mattings are used for wall-hangings, carpeting, seats and beds. In the _shem_ are the mortar and pestle for pounding millet. The mortar is hollowed out from a section of a tree trunk; the pestle is heavy, with a head at each end. Women do the pounding, often two of them working together, dealing alternate blows, and singing wordless songs to give time to the blows. There is a variety of bowls and platters, trays, stirrers, ladles, and spoons, cut from wood, some plain and some decorated with ornamental carved designs. Also cut from wood, are pounders, pothooks, suspended cradles, sticks for the baby to sit on when carried, troughs for feeding bears from, and the different parts of the simple loom. There are two kinds of native devices for lighting—a torch consisting of a cleft-stick with a folded bit of birch-bark stuck into the cleft and a lamp made of a pecten shell, as a receiver for oil, set up on a crotched stick. The shell of the pecten also makes a good scoop for dipping out the dinner from the common pot—we have the one that old Parapita used to use at home—and at Shiraoi, we found the great shell lashed to a stick handle, for use as a ladle. Trays and bowls, scoops and ladles are also neatly made from pieces of bark. Agricultural implements are crude. A bent stick serves as a grub or hoe, while poor spades may be cut from wood. A long and narrow fresh-water mussel shell is the sickle with which grain is cut, only the head being removed, while the whole length of the straw remains standing in the field. [Illustration: WOMEN POUNDING MILLET.] Left to themselves, the Ainu would prefer to remain hunters and fishermen. Their mountains abounded in deer and bears and the waters of Yezo swarmed with salmon and other fish. The Ainu had devised a series of ingenious traps and weapons. To-day they have guns, but bows are also somewhat used, though poisoned arrows are a thing of the past—thanks to Japanese laws. The Ainu bow is a single, simple, stick of yew; the bowstring is a cord of bark fibre. The poisoned arrow was an ingenious affair. The foundation of the poison was aconite secured from the corm of the plant; to this various other ingredients were added. Not everyone knew how to compound the poison and to-day the knowledge is possessed by few. The point of the arrow was rather large and broad and was hollowed out on one side; a wad of the poison was pressed into this hollow and then set in place with gum. The Ainu hunter, besides his bows and arrows, spears and clubs, had his hunting knife and knew well how to use it in close encounters with bears. He still uses it and always carries it, sheathed in an elaborately carved wooden case, upon his person.