raids of the wolves on their cattle or fish-traps. The professional wolf-killer prays to the animal whom he has bereaved of life, and seeks to avert the vengeance of the other wolves by laying the blame of the slaughter on the people of another settlement. To purify the gun which has perpetrated the murder, he unscrews the barrel, inserts into it seven small sour-wood rods which have been heated in the fire, and then allows the barrel and its contents to lie in a running stream till morning.(636) When the Chuckchees of north-eastern Siberia have killed a wolf, they hold a festival, at which they cry, “Wolf, be not angry with us. It was not we who killed you, it was the Russians who destroyed you.”(637) In ancient Athens any man who killed a wolf had to bury it by subscription.(638) (M170) In Jebel-Nuba, a district of the eastern Sudan, it is forbidden to touch the nests or remove the young of a species of black birds, resembling our blackbirds, because the people believe that the parent birds would avenge the wrong by causing a stormy wind to blow, which would destroy the harvest.(639) Some of the Sudanese negroes of Upper Egypt regard the great black raven (_Corvus umbrinus_) as their uncle and exact pecuniary compensation or blood-money from any one who has been so rash as to slay their sable relative. Having satisfied their scruples on that head, they give the bird a solemn burial, carrying the corpse to the graveyard on a bier with flags and shouts of _la ill Allah_, just as if they were interring one of their kinsfolk.(640) The Palenques of South America are very careful to spare harmless animals which are not good for food; because they believe that any injury inflicted on such creatures would entail the sickness or death of their own children.(641)