164 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



man's path.. Not that he is shy of human settlements, for he often 

 stations himself not far from these, and sometimes falls upon domes- 

 tic animals under the very eyes of their possessors; but he shows 

 himself so sporadically that many Siberians have never seen him face 

 to face, nor met him in the forest. It seems likely that he goes 

 a-touring all the summer. He traverses the woods with a disregard 

 of paths, but keeps to more or less beaten tracks when he ascends 

 to the heights of the mountains in late summer, or returns to lower 

 ground at the beginning of winter. When the corn is ripe, he 

 stations himself in the fringes of the forest that he may steal com- 

 fortably from the adjacent fields; sometimes he leaves the wood 

 entirely and visits the steppes, or the mountain-sides with steppe 

 characters; he will stay a long time in one district and hurry 

 through another without stopping, always and everywhere keeping 

 a sharp look-out for the constantly recurring opportunities of securing 

 his favourite foods. In most districts he is emphatically a vege- 

 tarian; here and there he becomes a formidable carnivore; in other 

 places he seeks after carrion. In spring he is on short commons, 

 and takes what he can get; he sneaks stealthily on the herds graz- 

 ing in the woodland, makes a sudden bound on a victim, or pursues 

 it with surprising rapidity, seizes it, drags it to the ground, kills it, 

 and, after satiating himself, buries the remainder for a future meal. 

 When a cattle plague rages, he visits the burial-places in order to 

 secure the carcasses, and he is even accused of being a body-snatcher. 

 In summer he plunders the fields of rye, wheat, and oats, robs bee- 

 hives, and the nests of wild-bees and wasps, destroys ant-hills for 

 the sake of the pupae, rolls old trunks over to get at the beetles and 

 grubs beneath, and even breaks up mouldering trees to capture the 

 larvae which live in rotting wood. In autumn he lives almost ex- 

 clusively on berries of all sorts, and even on those fruits which he can 

 gather from such trees as the bird-cherry; when the cembra-cones 

 are ripe he goes after these, climbing lofty trees, and breaking off not 

 only branches but the very tops; nor can he refrain from persistently 

 prowling round the stores in which the cones are temporarily 

 collected, or from trying to find his way in. Moreover, at all 

 seasons he tries his hand at fishing, and not unfrequently with 



