of the jury threatened the twelfth with a taste of the cowskin unless he would bring in a verdict of guilty.  He did so, and the men were condemned.  Before they were removed to the state-prison, the court-house was burnt down and the jail was in flames, but luckily they were extinguished without the liberation of the prisoners.  Such at length became the general feeling of insecurity, that three hundred citizens of Ogle county, as I understand, have formed themselves into a company of volunteers for the purpose of clearing the county of these men.  Two horse-thieves have been seized and flogged, and Bridge, their patron, has been ordered to remove or abide the consequences.

As we were returning from Dixon on the morning of the 19th, we heard a kind of humming noise in the grass, which one of the company said proceeded from a rattlesnake.  We dismounted and found in fact it was made by a prairie-rattlesnake, which lay coiled around a tuft of herbage, and which we soon dispatched.  The Indians call this small variety of the rattlesnake, the Massasauger.  Horses are frequently bitten by it and come to the doors of their owners with their heads horribly swelled but they are recovered by the application of hartshorn.  A little further on, one of the party raised the cry of wolf, and looking we saw a prairie-wolf in the path before us, a prick-eared animal of a reddish-gray color, standing and gazing at us with great composure.  As we approached, he trotted off into the grass, with his nose near the ground, not deigning to hasten his pace for our shouts, and shortly afterward we saw two others running in a different direction.

The prairie-wolf is not so formidable an animal as the name of wolf would seem to denote; he is quite as great a coward as robber, but he is exceedingly mischievous.  He never takes full-grown sheep unless he goes with a strong troop of his friends, but seizes young lambs, carries off sucking-pigs, robs the henroost, devours sweet corn in the gardens, and plunders the water-melon patch.  A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.  It is their way to gnaw a hole immediately into the first melon they lay hold of.  If it happens to be ripe, the inside is devoured at once, if not, it is dropped and another is sought out, and a quarrel is picked with the discoverer of a ripe one, and loud and shrill is the barking, and fierce the growling and snapping which is heard on these occasions.  It is surprising, I am told, with what dexterity a wolf will make the most of a melon; absorbing every remnant of the pulp, and hollowing it out as clean as it could be scraped by a spoon.  This is when the allowance of melons is scarce, but when they are abundant he is as careless and wasteful as a government agent.

Enough of natural history.  I will finish my letter another day.

June 26th.