Bear-hunting takes place in the late winter and early spring. In these hunts the Ainu often show great courage and intrepidity. The bear is a large, brown species, near, if not identical with, the grizzly bear. When one is killed it is ceremoniously treated. Salutations and apologies are made to the body. It is then skinned and the head and skin are laid out and decorated with ribbons, _inao_ shavings, etc. Feasting ensues and the whole occasion is one of joy and gaiety. But this is _not_ the “bear-feast.” When on these bear-hunts, the Ainu are particularly anxious to capture a little bear cub, which is taken home alive, and given over to a woman for raising. There has been much debate over the question whether she suckles it as she would her baby. It has often been affirmed that she does and has often been denied. When Mr. Batchelor wrote _The Ainu of Japan_, he was anxious not to admit the claim. Since then, however, he has actually seen the little animal suckled by women, several times. On one occasion, when he was preaching in a house, the little cub was taken into the service and was passed from one woman to another and suckled, in the most matter-of-fact way. Later on, though no longer suckled, the pet bear is most carefully fed; sometimes the woman will give it a soft morsel with her lips. When the animal is too large to be longer kept in the house and petted, it is put out into the cage, constructed of a cob-work of logs and raised a little above the ground on posts. In feeding it there, a special wooden trough with a handle is used. Formerly the bear was kept two or three years in the village; now one rarely sees a bear more than a year old in the cages. Finally the time for the great ceremonial arrives. Food and drink are prepared in large quantities—millet cakes or dumplings, millet beer, and saké (Japanese rice brandy). Guests from other villages are invited. Everyone is dressed in their finest clothing. The older and more important men wear their crowns. The men have bathed and their foreheads and the back of their necks have been shaved and their hair trimmed; bathing, shaving and hair trimming regularly occur but once a year. Abundance of fresh _inao_ are cut. A preliminary feasting takes place, at which the men seat themselves in a semi-circle to the east of the house, facing the _nusa_, near the food and drink, which are placed before them; the women sit behind the men. Presently a man, chosen for that service, goes to the bear’s cage, where he salaams and makes an address to the captive. Mr. Batchelor prints one such address, as follows: “Oh thou divine one, thou wast sent into the world for us to hunt. Oh, thou precious little divinity, we worship thee; pray hear our prayer. We have nourished thee and brought thee up with a deal of pains and trouble, all because we love thee so. Now, as thou hast grown big, we are about to send thee to thy father and mother. When thou comest to them