The cook, upon his wife's information, looked out of the kitchen, and saw that there was a wolf worrying the puppy he therefore called to the people in the yard, who pulled to the outer door, so that the animal could not escape, and who then fetched a gun which they handed in through the window to the cook. The wolf was now alarmed; and when the man opened the door cautiously, and thrust forward the gun to shoot, the beast rushed at him, and seizing the barrel of the gun in his teeth, almost pulled it out of the cook's hands. He, however, recovered it, < and retreating, shut the door upon the animal. The latter, after a few minutes, lay down, and when the cook looked forth again, he saw the wolf crouched against his wife's door. He called to her to make a noise inside, upon which the beast got up, and moving a little on one side, received a shot in the head, which the cook followed up by beating out his brains with the butt-end of the gun. The unfortunate puppy was found half eaten in the corner of the room.

Wolves are exceedingly fond of dog's-flesh, and they sometimes make use of a very cunning stratagem to obtain it. A wolf or two will approach a village in the day-time, upon which all the dogs run out and begin to bark at them; the wolves then pretend to be frightened and retire, upon which the dogs take courage and advance; at length, by alternately stopping and running away, the wolves entice

a few of the more adventurous curs to a considerable distance from the village, when they suddenly turn round upon their foremost pursuers and carry them off.

Most parts of Russia are sadly infested by these animals, which commit great depredations among the cattle. They are, generally speaking, afraid of human beings, but they occasionally pick up a child in the woods, and instances are by no means wanting of their attacking even grown-up men when the weather is very severe. These misfortunes occasionally happen in the neighbourhood of Petersburg, where the wolves are extremely numerous and very daring. At the country-house of a near relation of M-'s, about twelve miles from Petersburg, a man was, a year or two ago, attacked in the garden by a single wolf and severely wounded, escaping with difficulty with his life. The same place was the scene of another curious wolf-adventure. A disturbance was heard at night outside the house (I suppose among the dogs); however, several people went out to see what was the matter, but they discovered nothing, and though they supposed that a wolf had been there, they came back into the house. Presently, however, they missed one of the servants, a lad of eighteen, who had been one of the first to sally forth. As he did not return, they became alarmed, and went out again with lanterns to search for him: they were not long before they found him stretched on

the ground, apparently dead, with a wolf lying dead by his side: the man, however, was only in a swoon, and soon recovered on being raised up. As soon as he was able to give an account of himself, it appeared, that on the first alarm he had run out of the house with a large stick in his hand, and had been immediately attacked by the wolf, which so terrified him, that aiming one instinctive blow at his enemy, he had fallen down in the senseless state in which he was found: the single blow of his heavy stick had, however, by an extraordinary accident, hit the wolf on the head and killed him.

When seven or eight of these animals are collected together in the winter, they are often sufficiently dangerous, and it is said that a single wolf, on meeting with a man in a lonely place, will sometimes commence howling, until his friends around assemble as at the sound of a dinner bell, in sufficient numbers to venture on the attack. They will sometimes even assail travellers on the high-road; a friend of mine told me that once, between Moscow and Petersburg, he was journeying in an open sledge, it being excessively cold, and he was pursued for some miles by a pack of wolves who ran by the side of the sledge, jumping up at it, and so close, that his valet, who was sitting by his side, stabbed at the brutes with a dagger and wounded some of them; but the wolves did not give up the pursuit till they met a long string of sledges, which alarmed them.

The wolf prefers living in small brushwood covers near a village, to inhabiting the large forests; these, however, are the fastnesses of his race, and the existence of these immense tracts of wood and desert in Russia would perhaps defeat any attempt to rid the country of those ferocious beasts. It is, however, difficult to believe, that such a pest might not be in some measure put down if exertion were systematically made; without combination, however, the thing is impossible, and in most parts of the country the wolves are rarely molested; indeed, the peasants often have a prejudice against so doing, as they think it only exasperates the animals and makes them more fierce and dangerous: I need not say that this is a most absurd notion, and that where it prevails, the beasts become only more daring by impunity. They often show themselves in broad day-light, but I have never seen one since I have been in the country.

There are various ways of destroying wolves; sometimes this is done by poison, the best being nux vomica, since it does not, like arsenic, injure the fur, which is some consideration, for a wolf's skin raw is worth from eight to ten shillings. A calf, or some other dead animal, is well impregnated with nux vomica, and laid in a retired spot in a wood; the wolves find it, and feast on it, and the effect of the poison is very rapid. I have heard of six wolves being destroyed in this manner in one night; four

were found dead on the spot, and two others were discovered afterwards at a little distance.

Every one has heard of the mode of catching these animals in pitfalls, by placing a lamb or a pig as a bait, on the top of a post rising out of the pit: they have in Russia a kind of trap, which is exceedingly simple, but which I never heard of before I came into the country. A small circle is inclosed with a palisade or some other fence, too high for a wolf to leap or climb over; this fence is again surrounded by another of the same kind, leaving a narrow space between the two: the outer fence has a door, which opens inwards, so as to fill up the space between the two palisades when it is set open. A lamb or a pig is placed at night in the inner circle, and being alone and cold, it naturally bleats, or grunts and squeals; the noise attracts the wolf, who enters the door which is open, and finding the inner fence still between him and his prey, prowls round it in hopes of discovering an opening. When he arrives at the door, having made the circuit of the place, he pushes against it, and thus shuts it to, and imprisons himself; for the space in which he is, being narrow, and his back-bone very inflexible, he cannot turn, and the door is of course so hung as to shut from a very light pressure.

You have heard of the plan of shooting wolves on a moonlight night in winter, when two or three sportsmen place themselves, well-armed, in a sledge, and are driven through the roads and tracks in the woods.