Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

 

New York Evening Post

     Strange as it may seem, the emancipation of the serfs in Russia has increased the number of wolves in that country. The serfs used to act as their masters drivers in the great wolf- hunts which formed a national pastime; but since the liberation the wolf-hunt has gradually become unpopular, and consequently the wolves are having a better time of it. Thus M. Lazarewski, in a pamplet published by the Russian Ministerial Printing Office, estimates the number of wolves in European Russia along at not less than 200,000, and shows that while the average annual loss of human lives in the years 1840-51 was only 125, the number of victums in 1875 was no less than 181. The loss to domestic animals is valued at about $12,500, 000 annually, and that in wild animals at about $42,000,000.