148 HUNTING WITH DOGS. 



Stepan, but his lonely life has made him so 

 reserved as to be almost inaccessible to the wiles 

 of the inquirer. He is a Tscherkess who has 

 abjured Mahometanism without apparently adopt- 

 ing any other faith ; so of his religion he had 

 little to tell. About his village and the life in it 

 he said little more, and of the Tscherkess wars 

 he absolutely refused to speak though on that 

 topic he evidently had more to say from what 

 seemed to me a fear lest any words of his being 

 repeated might get him into trouble. So we fell 

 back upon natural history, and on this topic he 

 was fairly fluent. 



Amongst other things he told me of some 

 quaint habits of the hedgehog for I presume it 

 was the hedgehog and not the porcupine he meant ; 

 for the word he used for the beast was one which 

 I did not know, being Tscherkess patois of some 

 kind. But from his description the animal was 

 either one or the other ; and as the porcupine is 

 only supposed, I think, to inhabit the Persian 

 border of the Caucasus, the animal of Stepan's 

 story was probably a hedgehog. He described a 

 hedgehog perfectly, and then added that there were 

 two kinds in the Caucasus, one with head and feet 

 like a pig, the other with head and feet like a 

 hound. It was one of the latter which he noticed 

 one day under an apple-tree in the forest, collecting 

 and carrying off the fallen fruit by rolling over it 



