64 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 247. 



derstand and obey signs. He was unwilling to 

 wear clothes, took them off when left alone, but 

 put them on again in alarm when discovered ; and 

 to the last often injured or destroyed them by 

 rubbing them against trees or posts, like a beast, 

 when any part of his body itched. 



i " One night, while the boy was lying under the tree, 

 near Janoo, Janoo saw two wolves come up stealthily, and 

 smell at the boy. They then touched him, and he got 

 up, and instead of being frightened, the boy put his hands 

 upon their heads, and they began to play with him. They 

 capered around him, and he threw straw and leaves at 

 them. Janoo tried to drive them off, but could not, and 

 became much alarmed ; and he called out to the sentry 

 over the guns, Meer Akbur Allee, and told him that the 

 wolves were going to eat the boy. He replied, ' Come 

 away, and leave him, or they will eat j'ou also ; ' but 

 when they saw them begin to play together, his fears 

 subsided, and he kept quiet. Gaining confidence by de- 

 grees, he drove them away, but after going a little dis- 

 tance they returned, and began to play again with the 

 boy. At last he succeeded in driving them off altogether. 

 The night after three wolves came, and the boy and they 

 played together. A few nights after four wolves came, 

 but at no time did more than four come ; they came four 

 or five times, and Janoo had no longer any fear of them, 

 and he thinks that the first two that came must have 

 been the two cubs with which the boy was first found, 

 and that they were prevented from seizing him by re- 

 cognising the smell : they licked his face with their 

 tongues as he put his hands on their heads." 



Whenever the boy passed the jungle he always 

 tried to escape into it ; at last he ran away and 

 did not return. About two months after he had 

 gone, a woman of the weaver caste, from a neigh- 

 bouring village, came and gave such a description 

 of marks on the boy's body, as identified him as 

 her son, who had been taken from her five or six 

 years before, at about four years of age, by a 

 wolf. The author of the pamphlet states that the 

 circumstances regarding the boy, after he had 

 been brought to the village, were verified before 

 him by Janoo and the other original witnesses ; 

 in this, however, as in the other cases, the 

 trooper's story, who is supposed to have seen the 

 boy with the wolf-cubs, rests on hearsay. 



The author makes at the end the following 

 remark : 



" From what I have seen and heard, I should doubt 

 whether any boy, who had been many j'ears with wolves, 

 up to the age of eight or ten, would ever attain the 

 average intellect of man. 1 have never heard of a man 

 who had been spared and nurtured by wolves having been 

 found ; and as many boys have been recovered by wolves 

 after they had been many years with them, we must con- 

 clude that, after a time, they either die from living ex- 

 clusively on animal food before they attain the age of 

 manhood, or are destroyed by the wolves themselves, or 

 other beasts of prey, in the jungles, from whom they are 

 unable to escape, like the wolves themselves, from want 

 of the same speed." 



As the question stands upon the facts related in 

 this pamphlet, there is no satisfactory proof of 

 any boy having been found in the care of wolves, 



or in their company. In none of the stories is 

 this part of the case traced distinctly to the tes- 

 timony of an eye-witness. This important defect 

 in the evidence renders a suspense of belief ne- 

 cessary, especially as many of the circumstances, 

 supposed or reported, are in themselves highly 

 improbable. 



In the first place, it is difiicult to understand 

 why certain children should be spared by the 

 wolves, when it is stated to be their habit to kill 

 and eat those which they carry off. The writer 

 of the pamphlet states that the vagrant commu- 

 nities near Sultanpoor, who do not object to 

 killing wild animals, very seldom catch wolves, 

 though they know all their dens, and could easily 

 dig them out, as they dig out other animals. This 

 is supposed to arise from the profit which they 

 make by the gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, 

 and other ornaments, which are worn by the chil- 

 dren whom the wolves carry to their dens and 

 devour, and are left at the entrance of these dens. 

 If the gold ornaments of the children carried off 

 and devoured by wolves are sufficiently numerous 

 to be a regular source of profit to the vagrant 

 communities, the number of children killed must 

 be considerable. 



Even, however, if we suppose a wolf, from some 

 unaccountable caprice, to spare a child which it 

 carries off, it is difficult to understand how the 

 child can be reared. The children alleged in this 

 pamphlet to be carried off are not infants, but of 

 the age^ of three or four years. They would not, 

 like Romulus and Remus, have been suckled by 

 a wolf; but they must have been fed upon flesh 

 which the wolf procured for them. This is an 

 office which wolves are not in the habit of per- 

 forming for their own young ; and it is not ap- 

 parent why they should undertake to perform it 

 for a child. Besides, if a child were to live in an 

 Indian forest with a wolf, it might conceivably be 

 spared by its own protector ; but how could it 

 avoid , falling a prey to other wolves and wild 

 beasts ? 



The account of the wolf-boys running upon all- 

 fours, and of the anterior part of their knees and 

 elbows becoming hardened, seems inconsistent 

 with the structure of the human body, to which 

 erect and not quadrupedal progression is essen- 

 tial. The swiftness of these boys, and the diffi- 

 culty with which one of them was caught by the 

 fleetest young men of the pursuing party, is quite 

 unintelligible. The extent to which the children 

 are represented as bestialised by the association 

 with wolves, and by the sylvan life, particularly 

 the growth of hair upon one of them (like Orson 

 in the nursery tale), savour of the marvellous, and 

 resemble the stories circulated by the enemies of 

 vaccination, about the growth of horns and other 

 bovine appendages from the persons vaccinated. 

 The freemasonry described as existing between 



