SNARLING SHADOWS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 37, 13 February 1930, Page 15

SNARLING SHADOWS

WOLVES IN ..EUROPE SIGNS OF HARD WINTER The wolves have crossed their western frontier —tho almost certain presage of another severe winter on the Continent. In Siberia, it is reported, tho peasants are holding drives against the packs. Normally tho wolf frontier is an indeterminate line that can. be drawn roughly from Helsingfors to Basle, and thence to the mid-point of tho Pyrenees. West of that line the grim phrase, "wolf winter," common enough in Central Europe and • the Balkans, has only a. metaphorical meaning. Bast of it is the added terror of literal, truth. The hungering wolf is as merciless as the cold which drives him forth. Within the past five years, writes G. Pinnock in the "Daily Telegraph," wolves have devoured childreu in Rumania, Poland, and remote districts .of Jugoslavia. In 1925, in Russia', they accounted for 40,000 horses and'so,ooo cows. A year ago a pair, slinking through the Ardennes, penetrated Northern France and reached Boulogne; to throw back their heads and howl, almost within sight of the coast of Kent. Now, once more, they are fleeing westward from the advance of winter. They have been seen in Alsace, in the Auvergne, and as far west as Pampeluna, in Spainall within the past few weeks. For us in England it is difficult to realise the seriousness of the wolf menace existing every winter throughout the greater part of Europe. Four centuries

have 'passed since .lie hist wolf disappeared from these' glands, after prodigious destructive eli'orts carried on almost ceaselessly from Saxou times. But Frenchmen of the Auvergiies still pay taxes for the destruction of wolves. To-day niosfc of Europe east of the line is harbouring larger, stronger, and fiercer wolf packs than have been known tor half a century.; During the four, years that the nations were fighting each other, and, during the busy, unsettled following years, raeu had no time to attend to the wolf enemy. In the! forests of chaotic Russia the wolves have multiplied thirtyJ'old, mated, bred, and grown, to sweep down upon a, dozen nations. Last winter was one of the most severe experienced on- the Continent for thirty years. xVs the snows drove westwards from the Urals and the Caucasus the wolf packs fled ahead. In Poland wolves lurking 'near a village attacked a group of trading peasants and killed four of them within sight of their cottage doors. And while the Simplon-Orieut express lay snowed up iv Macedonia, lean, grey, snarlling shadows slunk to and fro not fifty yards from the crippled train. : In Slovenia the wol£ menace has become a peril, and for the last two years intensive measures, have been taken to combat: it. Patrols of three or four good shots, armed with magazine rifles, station themselves on clear nights near the light plank footbridges spanning the forest streams, which the wolves must cross on their marauding' forays; The patrol crouches among the dark firs. There is an hour or so of intense waiting, and then the light padding and rustle 6f an approaching pack. Thei-e arS two volleys when the wolves are thickest on the plank bridge, and two more in quick succession as the ambushed beasts scatter, howling fear and defiance, leaving, if the shooting has been good, limp bodies in the snow. . . . .