enticated case testifying
to the efficacy of this or of any other mode of exorcism. As far as I
know, once a werwolf always a werwolf is an inviolable rule.

Apparently women are more desirous of becoming werwolves than men, more
women than men having acquired the property of werwolfery through their
own act. In the case of women candidates for this evil property, the
inspiring motive is almost always one of revenge, sometimes on a
faithless lover, but more often on another woman; and when once women
metamorphose thus, their craving for human flesh is simply
insatiable--in fact, they are far more cruel and daring, and much more
to be dreaded, than male werwolves. The following story seems to bear
out the truth of this assertion:--

THE CASE OF IVAN OF SHIGANSKA

Shiganska was--for it no longer exists, having been obliterated about
fifty years ago by a blizzard--a small village on the left bank of the
Petchora, about a hundred miles from its mouth.

Owing chiefly to the character of the adjacent country, Shiganska was
wanting in every beauty and variety that charms the eye. It was situated
on a stretch of flat land between two mountain ranges, _i.e._, the Ural
on one side and the Taman on the other, and surrounded by a wood so
thick that it was with the greatest difficulty anyone could force a way
into it, supposing they had been sufficiently fortunate to escape
sticking fast in the morasses of soft, rotten mould, that lie hidden in
the least suspicious looking places, on its borders. Here were to be
found lycanthropous blue and white flowers, which those desirous of
becoming werwolves sought from far and wide, some even coming from
Siberia, and some from away down South as far as Astrakan. And the woods
abounded not only in werwolves, but in all sorts of supernatural
horrors--phantoms of the dead, _i.e._ (of murderers and suicides) Vice
Elementals and Vagrarians, vampires and ghouls; no region in Russia
boasted so many, and for this reason it was scrupulously avoided by all
sensible people after sunset.

Ivan, like most of the male inhabitants of Shiganska, lived by the
chase: the black fox, the sable, the fox with the dark-coloured throat,
the red fox, white fox, squirrel, ermine, and black bear alike fell
victims to his gun; whilst in the Petchora, when the weather permitted
it, he caught, besides many other kinds of fish, a goodly proportion of
salmon, nelma (a kind of salmon trout), bleak, sturgeon, sterlet,