The chief occupation is scientific farming, introduced by the youthful
Cossack, who bought five roubles' worth of works on agriculture. The most
important part of this farming consists of wholesale slaughter, which does
not cease for a single moment in the day. They kill sparrows, swallows,
bumblebees, ants, magpies, crows--to prevent them eating bees; to prevent
the bees from spoiling the blossom on the fruit-trees they kill bees, and
to prevent the fruit-trees from exhausting the ground they cut down the
fruit-trees. One gets thus a regular circle which, though somewhat
original, is based on the latest data of science.

We retire at nine in the evening. Sleep is disturbed, for Belonozhkas and
Muhtars howl in the yard and Tseter furiously barks in answer to them from
under my sofa. I am awakened by shooting: my hosts shoot with rifles from
the windows at some animal which does damage to their crops. To leave the
house at night one has to call the Cossack, for otherwise the dogs would
tear one to bits.

The weather is fine. The grass is tall and in blossom. I watch bees and men
among whom I feel myself something like a Mikluha-Maklay. Last night there
was a beautiful thunderstorm.

... The coal mines are not far off. To-morrow morning early I am going on a
one-horse droshky to Ivanovka (twenty-three versts) to fetch my letters
from the post.

... We eat turkeys' eggs. Turkeys lay eggs in the wood on last year's
leaves. They kill hens, geese, pigs, etc., by shooting here. The shooting
is incessant.