Avoi.F-ii r.NTiNo.J !• R 31 O U N P A 1 X, l" I H 1. 1), A N D J- A K 31'. 



LWdl.r-llL'NTINO. 



nwaiti'd tlio rainily of the poor courici-, who 

 were toiliriLj up tlio iiiouutaiii to obtain some 

 iiewsof tlieir expecteil tVieiul : tlieyall perished. 

 A story is told of one of tliese dogs, wlio having 

 found ft child unhurt, whose mother had been 

 destroyed by an avalanche, induced tlio boy to 

 mount upon his bade, and thus carried him to 

 the gate of tlie convent, Tiio incident forms 

 the subject of a French print. 



The wolf-dog of the Abrnzzi is pure white, 

 somewhat more lightly formed than tlie New- 

 foundland dog, but strong and muscuhir, and 

 the hair is long and flowing. 



What our ancestors sullered from tlie ravages 

 of wolves, may readily be inferred from the va- 

 rious plans which are, at the present day, 

 adopted in other countries infested by them for 

 their rapid destruction. 



Mr. Greiff, one of the oldest and best sports- 

 men in Sweden, dwelt in Stockholm, and took 

 a very prominent part on the occasion of the 

 p-olitical convulsions which agitated that coun- 

 try between 1S20 — '30. It was he who seized 

 the person of the king Gustavus, in which act 

 the monarch slightly wounded him with a sword 

 which he tlieu held in his hand. Mr. Greiff, 

 however, being a man of herculean strength, 

 wrested this weapon from tlie hand of his sov- 

 ereign, and took him up in liis arms, as he 

 would have done a child, and conveyed him to 

 a place of security. By thus periling his life, 

 Mr. Greiff was, perhaps, a principal means of 

 bringing about a bloodless revolution. This 

 gentleman gives us a somewhat minute account 

 of the plans adopted by his countrymen for 

 the destruction of vi-olves in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Swedish capital. "We take the 

 account from jNIr. Lloyd, whose bear and wolf- 

 hunting exploits furnished him with the 

 materials for a very interestijig couple of 

 volumes : — ■ 



A spot covered with a tolerably thick wood 

 of large trees, especially spruce, where the 

 ground is undulating, and which contains fens 

 and mosses, and of such great extent, that 

 the pathway does not pass over fields or plains 

 which prevent the tracing of the animals, after 

 a fall of snow or sleet, is the suitable place for 

 entrapping wolves. Tlie wood must be left 

 quiet from passengers, or woodsmen, during 

 tiie time of hunting — or, in other words, the 

 tiinter season; and should be situated near 

 3 G 



the centre of tlie parish whoso peasants are to 

 for.-n tlie skall, or trap. A cottage aliould be 

 near the phice, that the under-huntsmen may 

 find quarters, and have opportunity to call up 

 ' in haste the men employed to fasten on tho 

 I Jngttyg, or hunting-cloth, by which tlie daily 

 watch of a whole division of tho country, for 

 this purpose, will be avoided. 

 I The hewing down of trees, for the purpose 

 of forming the skall-plat, or [ilaco of lure, 

 should take place in tiie montli of August or 

 September, when the assistance of the autho- 

 rities must be required. If the wood is not of 

 the thickest and heaviest kind, the skall-plats 

 should be ready in two to three days, with 

 thirty to forty labourers per day. 



When the skall-plat is ready, it must be 

 kept undisturbed by the woodsmen, and from 

 all noise. 



In the month of October, when the peasants 

 begin to kill their worn-out horses, the head- 

 ranger gives them intimation that they shall, 

 in conformity with orders from authority, 

 transport them to the hunting or lure-place, 

 and give the necessary commands for their 

 skinning ; and also that a huntsman is to be at 

 hand to direct that the carrion should be laid 

 in tho proper place. 



As soon as the ground is frozen, the hunting- 

 cloth is brought out, which must be smoothed 

 well down, and beaten with fir branches, so 

 that all shall be prepared against the first 

 falling snow ; for the hunts which can be formed 

 by the traces on the first snow, or before 

 Christmas, are the surest. 



Two huntsmen are then ordered to keep 

 watcli at the skall-plat, the day on which tho 

 snow has fallen ; and they should go round it 

 three times a day, morning and evening, and 

 once during the night with a lantern of tin, so 

 constructed, that it only throws light from the 

 bottom ; the marks of the animals going in 

 and out are carefully noted each time, and 

 written down in a journal, and whether thej 

 follow each other in numbers, or go singly. 



An experienced huntsman will soon discover 

 at what time the animals visit the carrion ; the 

 8th, 11th, and 14th days are usually the period?, 

 after they have once eaten of it. It happens 

 that wolves, early in winter, get into the skall- 

 plat, and lie there several days, without their 

 traces being discovered ; and, on such occasions, 



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