, S CRE 77 VENESS. l x T 



the South Belgian mountaineers. The snow was the 

 first of the season ; but a few days after, the same spoor 

 was found in a drift at the foot of a ravine, and a sharp- 

 eyed lad traced it to a gypsum-cave, the Salpeter Loch, 

 so called from the nitrous deposits in one of its ramifi- 

 cations. The news soon spread to the Salzbad and caused 

 an animated controversy among the sportsmen of the 

 neighborhood. But in Kurhessen every township has 

 its Oberforster, the overseer of the government forest 

 and the supreme authority on all questions pertaining 

 to woodcraft and venery ; and the Forster of Allendorf 

 ridiculed the lynx-report. " There are no lynxes in the 

 Kaufunger-Wald," was his verdict, " except near Alme- 

 rode, twenty miles from here, and there only in very 

 hard winters." Besides, lynxes and cats stick to the 

 trees till after Christmas, when the mountain-brooks 

 freeze for good ; and the Forster ought to know, being 

 a graduate of the Austrian Forst-Schule of Herman- 

 stadt in Transylvania, where lynxes are as common as 

 squirrels. 



But the exponent of the Ardennes party was equally 

 positive, and on the first sunny day (also the first day of 

 the week, I am sorry to say) we all went to the Salpeter 

 Loch to settle the dispute of the two zoological dogma- 

 tists. The ravine being on a government preserve, no- 

 body was permitted to carry arms but the Oberforster, 

 who had shouldered his shot-gun in deference to regula- 

 tions, though without the least idea of having to use it 



