362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has ever been my fortune to read, detailed such a chase as witnessed 

 by him in the grand forests near Lake Nicaragua. " Certainly," he 

 exclaims at the conclusion of his account, " certainly no training could 

 have bettered that dog's run. To drive a grown buck back to his 

 starting-place, to send on a portion of tbe pack to that point where he 

 would strive to break cover, to head him again and again into the 

 cover where his speed could not be exerted to the full, were feats 

 which might well puzzle all the best dogs in England, and the human 

 intelligence which directs them." 



His game and its getting are not always so noble as this, however, 

 and the coyote knows well the pinch of famine, especially in winter. 

 " The main object of his life seems to be the satisfying of a hunger 

 which is always craving ; and to this aim all his cunning, impudence, 

 and audacity are mainly directed." Nothing comes amiss. Though 

 by no means the swiftest-footed quadruped upon the plains, he runs 

 down the deer, the pronghorn, and others, tiring them out by trickery 

 and then overpowering them by force of numbers. The buffalo for- 

 merly afforded him an unfailing supply, in the shape of carrion or 

 chance fragments left him by his Brahmans — the white wolves — who 

 steadily followed the herds, and seized upon decrepit or aged strag- 

 glers, or upon any calves they were able to surround and pull down. 

 In such piracy the coyotes themselves often engaged, though it tried 

 their highest powers ; and success followed a system of tireless wor- 

 rying. The poor bison or elk, upon which they concentrated, might 

 trample and gore half the pack, but the rest would " stay by him," and 

 finally nag him to death. I remember once reading an account of the 

 strategy by which a large stag Avas forced to succumb to a pack that 

 had driven it upon the ice of a frozen lake. Part of the wolves formed 

 a circle about the pond, within which the exhausted and slipping deer 

 was chased round and round, by patrols frequently relieved, until, 

 fainting with fatigue and loss of blood, the noble animal fell, to be 

 torn to pieces in an instant. 



Far less worthy game attracts this wild dog as well. In Califor- 

 nia and Mexico he has been so destructive to the sheep that incessant 

 war is waged upon him by the ranchmen. In Kansas and Nebraska 

 he is accused of making havoc among domestic poultry, suffering, no 

 doubt, the discredit of many additional depredations by foxes, skunks, 

 and weasels. Similar misdeeds were charged against him by the 

 farmers of Illinois and Wisconsin, when, forty years ago, those prai- 

 ries were the frontier. Two or three times a year, therefore, a general 

 holiday would be declared, and a wolf -hunt would be organized. 



Such a battue would take place just before the spring thawing. 

 "Word would be sent out, instructing the different villages concerned 

 to elect their captains and furnish their quota of willing gunners in 

 the ring that was to concentrate upon a point indicated by a tall flag- 

 staff far out in the prairie. These rings were, sometimes, twenty or 



