Bears are common enough to be a nuisance in the spring--when they do much harm to the flocks--and are usually of the ordinary brown type. Sometimes they are of a greyish colour; and the district of Jilu can boast a variety which is described as "white." The only skin of the type that the writer has seen, however, was light sandy in hue, and it is probably no more than a slight local variant in colour. Generally they are hunted in a strictly utilitarian way; the object being not so much as to provide sport as to get rid of a nuisance. All the men of the village who can raise anything that can be fired without bursting go out _en masse_, and beat the hillside till the quarry is roused. When that happens there is as much firing as at an ordinary tribal skirmish; and by the time the skin is brought in, it sometimes has some resemblance to a fishing-net. One good man of Qudshanis, however, had a more sporting disposition, and made a practice of hunting the bear in a way that would have delighted the soul of the Emperor Maximilian, with no other weapon than a short stick (some eight inches long, pointed at the ends) and a dagger. His method was to track the bear to his lair, to approach to within arm's length if possible, and then rouse the enemy. It seems that the bear could be trusted to stand at gaze for an instant with open mouth, and the hunter (so said deponent, who was the worthy old steward of the Nestorian Patriarch) then thrust the stick into his mouth, thus propping his jaws apart. The bear was sure to use his paws to get rid of the nuisance, and so laid himself open to just one stab from the dagger. It was certainly a sporting method, and the hunter got many skins and much local _kudos_, the latter being certainly well earned. However, as often happens, there came a day when something went wrong. Precisely what happened was not known, for the hunter was, as usual, alone--and he never came back to explain how he had failed.