108 HIS ENEMIES. 



with her until the third year, when they are left to shift for 

 themselves. 



She is a very affectionate mother, and at times defends her 

 progeny with desperation. It is even said that if people 

 approach the fawns when so young that they cannot flee from 

 the impending danger, she will attack the intruders with 

 fury ; and that though she may have left them to their fate 

 in the first instance, she has been known to return to the 

 spot, and savagely to charge the enemy. 



Independently of man, the elk has many enemies in the 

 northern forests. The bear now and then pulls him down, 

 and the lynx and the glutton prey upon the fawns ; but the 

 wolf is his worst foe. Though wolves are often beaten off 

 by the elk, they destroy numbers of those animals. No 

 later, indeed, than the winter before the last, and just before 

 my arrival at Halga Bruk in Wermeland, the remains of 

 an elk only recently killed by these ferocious beasts, were 

 brought to that place. They had seized the poor creature 

 which there was reason to believe had been long hunted by 

 them, almost immediately after leaving its lair. 



Should the elk be wounded, and that the wolves come 

 upon his bloody track even though it be four or five 

 days old they are said never to leave it until they have 

 made the deer their prize. The chase is, however, at times 

 of long continuance. In one instance that came in degree 

 under my personal observation, the elk must have run some 

 fifty miles before he succumbed to his pursuers. 



But the wolf occasionally pays dearly for his temerity. Only 

 two winters ago, when in quest of a bear in the Wermeland 

 forests, my man, on his return from executing a commission 

 at a distance, reported having seen by the way a quantity of 



