The Alaskan brown bears form a group of gigantic animals peculiar to North America and limited to the coast and islands of Alaska, from the head of Norton Sound to the Sitka Islands. The group includes a number of species, individuals of two of which, _Ursus gyas_, of the Alaska Peninsula, and _Ursus middendorffi_, of Kodiak Island, sometimes attain a weight of 1,500 pounds or more, and are not only the largest existing bears, but are the largest living carnivores in the world. They can be likened only to the great cave bears, which were the haunting terror of primitive mankind during the “Old Stone Age” in Europe. Brown bears still exist in Europe and Asia, but they form a distinct group of much smaller animals than the American species. The Alaskan brown bears vary much in color, from a dull golden yellowish to a dusky brown, becoming almost black in some species. In color some of the darker species are indistinguishable from the great grizzlies, with which in places they share their range; but the relatively shorter, thicker, and more strongly curved claws on the front feet of the brown bears are distinctive. As a rule they are inoffensive giants and take flight at the first sign of man. The taint left by a man’s recent track or the faintest odor on the passing breeze, indicating the proximity of their dreaded enemy, is enough to start the largest of them in instant flight. Instances are reported of their having attacked people wantonly, but such cases are extremely rare. When wounded or suddenly surprised at close quarters, the instinct of self-defense not infrequently incites them to attack their enemy with furious energy. Many Indian and white hunters have been killed or terribly mauled by them in such encounters. At close quarters their great size, strength, and activity--astonishing for such apparently clumsy beasts--render them terrific antagonists. Some of the species occupy open, rolling, or hilly tundras, and others live on the steepest and most rugged mountain slopes amid glaciers, rock slides, and perpetual snow-banks. On the approach of winter all retreat to dry locations, usually in the hills, where they dig dens in the earth or seek other cover to which they retire to hibernate, and here the young, usually two or three in number, are born. They usually emerge from hibernation in April or early May and wander about over the snow-covered hills and mountains. At this time their dark forms and their great tracks in the snow are so conspicuous that hunters have little difficulty in finding them.