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London Daily News
    Russia is still a good deal behind the rest of Europe in the matter of wolves. These animals, whose heads used to be a source of income to the borders of Wales, and of which the last were slain in Scotland by Cameron of Lochiel, make a considable figure in the agricultural returns of the Russian Empire. According to a pamplet which M. Lazarevsky has circulated, the wolves in 1873 did as much damage as a Tartar invasion might have inflicted. They carried off 179,000 cattle and 562,000 smaller domestic animals from the 45 Governments of Russia in Europe. In the Baltic Provinces fell 1,000 head of horned cattle, and in the Polish Provinces 2,700 oxen, and 8,000 sheep, pigs, and goats. The Journal des Debats calculates that if a cow be reckoned as worth 30 roubles, and sheep at four roubles, the gross sum of the tribute levied by the wolves in Russia must reach 7,7000,000 roubles. This is an amount of money quite well worth looking after, and it represents a number of wolves which must be dangerous even to human life. In the forests of France, and in the Pyrenees, the wolves last winter attacked some shepherds, and they now and then venture within the walls of lonely chateaus and farm-houses. But their numbers, of course, cannot be compared with the enormous hosts of savage beasts in Russia, which one may perhaps guess at from the quantity of wolves which must band together to kill and carry off one able-bodied ox. The writers of good little books, who invariably illustrate the virtue of self-sacrifice by the story of Erle, the faithful serf, who rescued his master’s family by throwing himself as food to the wolves, will be pleased to learn that opportunities of practicing devotion to the best style will long continue to be found in Russia.
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