The Wolverene, 243 



liaving taken possession of its post, notliing can drive it off; its 

 enormous prey drives rapidly along amongst the thickest woods, 

 rubs itself against the largest trees, and tears down the branches 

 with its expanded horns ; but still its insatiable foe sticks behind, 

 eating its neck, and digging its passage to the great blood vessels 

 that lie in that part. Travellers who wander through these deserts 

 often see pieces of the glutton's skin sticking to the trees against 

 which it was rubbed by the deer. But the animal's voracity is 

 greater than its feelings, and it never seizes without bringing down 

 its prey ; when therefore the deer, wounded and feeble with the 

 loss of blood, falls, the glutton is seen to make up for its former 

 abstinence by its present voracity. As it is not possessed of a 

 feast of this kind every day, it resolves to lay in a store to serve 

 it for a good while to come. It is indeed amazing how much one 

 of these animals can eat at a time. That which was seen by 

 Mr. Velein, although without exercise or air, although taken from 

 its native climate, and enjoying but an indifferent state of health, 

 was yet seen to eat thirteen pounds of flesh every day, and yet 

 remain unsatisfied. We may therefore easily conceive how much 

 more it must devour at once, after a long fast, of food of its own 

 procuring, and in the climate most natural to its constitution. 

 We are told accordingly that from being a lank, thin animal, 

 which it naturally is, it then gorges in such quantities that its 

 belly is distended and its whole figure seems to alter. Thus 

 voraciously it continues eating till, incapable of any other animal 

 function, it lies totally torpid by the animal it has killed ; and in 

 this situation it continues for two or three davs. In this loath- 

 some and helpless state it finds its chief protection from its horrid 

 smell, which few animals care to come near ; so that it continues 

 eating and sleeping till its prey be devoured, bones and all, and 

 then it mounts a tree in quest of another adventure." 



He then proceeds to state that the glutton prefers putrid flesh 

 to that of the animals newly killed, that it pursues the beaver, 

 plunders the traps and snares set by the hunters, digs open graves 

 and devours the bodies interred therein, and is so universally 

 predacious that the natives of the countries where the animal 

 inhabits hold it in detestation, and usually term it the Vulture of 

 quadrupeds. Another author, Olaus Magnus, from whom perhaps 

 Goldsmith compiled much of his history, says that the Arctic fox 

 provides for the glutton in the same manner that the jackal 

 was reputed to hunt for the lion. And Gmelin informs us that 



