this story, had Senhor Lopez described the way
in which the wolf lubricated his lank chaps
when at home with his bottle. Another
ingenious expedient of this same Congo wolf is
told by Father Jerome Merolla of Sorrento, a
Capucin missionary, who made a voyage to
that part of Southern Affrick in the year
sixteen hundred and eighty-two. "The wolves,"
he tells us, "that infest those parts, are so very
subtil, that they will scratch through the
walls of the houses, built here with palme
leaves, on purpose to come at the people,
whom having found, they incontinently
devour, or tear to pieces. A certain woman,"
he goes on to say, "once happening to go
a little further from her house than ordinary,
left her child within asleep: whilst she was
gone, a wolf broke in and lay down close by
the child that was asleep. The mother coming ,
soon after, went in to feed her child, and
spy'd the wolf; who seeing himself discovered,
immediately fled." With all submission
to Father Merolla, this wolf was an ass.

Authors differ very much about the
properties of these African wolves; but my
opinion of the wolf, based on the authority of
observers in all parts of the globe, is, that
—CÅ“lum, non animum, mutat; in other
words, that a wolf is a wolf all the world
over, whether he be white, as in the Arctic
regions—"grey-headed" (the hypocrite) "and
speckled with black spots like the tyger," as
in Ethiopia—black, as in the North American
prairies, or striped with grey and black, as at
the Cape of Good Hope. Look for the wolf
in the very Antarctic regions, and you will
find no improvement in his character, though
lie occupies an intermediate position, with
respect to his general habits, between the
Canis lupus and the Canis vulpes. Mr.
Waterhouse, in his Zoology of the Voyage of
the Beagle, under Captain Fitzroy, says he
was assured by several of the Spanish
countrymen, at the Falkland Islands, that
they used repeatedly to kill wolves by
means of a knife held in one hand, and a
piece of meat to tempt them to approach
them in the other. The Falkland Islands
wolves subsist almost exclusively on the
upland geese; which, from fear of them, like
the eider-ducks of Iceland, build only on
the small outlying islets. "These wolves,"
observes Mr. Waterhouse, " do not go in
packs; they wander about by day, but more
commonly in the evening; they burrow
holes; are generally very silent, excepting
during the breeding-season, when they utter
cries which were described to me as resembling
those of the Canis Azaræ."

Commodore Byron (in seventeen hundred
and sixty-five) describes the fierceness of
the Antarctic wolves in the following terms:
"The master having been sent out one day to
sound the coast upon the south shore, reported
at his return that four creatures of great
fierceness, resembling wolves, ran up to their
bellies in the water to attack the people in
his boat, and that, as they happened to have
no fire-arms with them, they had immediately
to put the boat off in deep water."
Byron adds, that "when any of these creatures
got sight of our people, though at ever so
great a distance, they ran directly at them;
and no less than five of them were killed this
day. They were always called wolves by the
ship's company, but, except in their size and
the shape of the tail, I think they bore a
greater resemblance to a fox. They are as
big as a middle-sized mastiff, and their fangs
are remarkably long and sharp. There are
great numbers of them upon the coast,
though it is not perhaps easy to guess how
they first came hither, for these islands are
at least one hundred leagues distant from
the main. They burrow in the ground like a
fox, and we have frequently seen pieces of
seals which they have mangled, and the skins
of penguins lie scattered about the mouths of
their holes. To get rid of these creatures,
our people set fire to the grass, so that the
country was in a blaze as far as the eye could
reach, for several days, and we could see
them running in great numbers to seek other
quarters."

The early adventurers in New England
had also their experience of wolves. One of
the party of Captain Miles Standish, who, in
the year sixteen hundred and twenty, founded
the settlement of Plymouth, thus describes
a pleasant interview with two of these
worthies: "This day, in the evening, John.
Goodman went abroad to use his lame feet,
that were pittifully ill with the cold hee had
got, having a little Spannell with him; a little
way from the Plantation two great Wolves
ran after the Dog, the Dog ran to him, and
betwixt his legs for succour; he had nothing
in his hands, but tooke up a sticke, and
hit him, and they presently ran both away,
but came againe; he got a Paile boord in his
hand, and they sate both on their tailes,
grinning at him a good while and went their
way and left him." One of the wolves
described by Captain Sherrard Osborne, in his
recent account of Sir R. M'Clure's successful
voyage of discovery, did something more than
grin on a similar occasion; for a deer being
killed, there was a regular tussle between a
wolf and a serjeant of marines which should
have the animal, each holding on by opposite
legs till the wolf was scared away.

Amicable relations may, however, be
established with wolves as well as with other
animals usually untameable. Captain Richard
Whitburne, in his description of Newfoundland,
in the year sixteen hundred and
fifteen, gives us an instance. " It was well
knowne to eight and fortie persons of my
companie, and divers other men " (plenty
of witnesses), " that three generall times, the
wolves of the countrie came downe neere
them to the sea-side, where they were labouring
about their Fish, howling and making a
noise: so that each time my Mastiffe Dogge