716 THE NATIONAL ZOO AT WASHINGTON. 



in 1895, I discovered an interesting bit of evidence on the question. 

 Wolves' eyes are set obliqiiel v, as in figure 2, plate III, and dogs' eyes 

 are set straight, as in figure 1. This, of course, is well known. But 

 of the 9 jackals then in the menagerie 2 had their eyes set wolf- 

 fashion, and the remaining 7 had them set like those of a dog. Of 

 course, the fact that both styles* are found in the same animal takes 

 from its weight as proof, and yet great stress has been laid on this 

 difi'erent angle of the eyes as an important difference between dog and 

 wolf. What weight, then, this argument has, is for the jackal. 



While making these notes among the animals of the W^ashington 

 Zoo, 1 used to go at all hours to see them. Late one evening 1 sat 

 down with some friends by the wolf cages, in the light of a full moon. 

 I said, "Let us see whether they have forgotten the Music of the 

 West." I put up my hands to my mouth and howled the hunting song 

 of the pack. The first to respond was a coyote from the plains. He 

 remembered the wild music that used to mean pickings for him. He 

 put up his muzzle and "yap-yapped" and howled. Next an old wolf 

 from Colorado came running out, looked and listened earnestly, and, 

 raising her snout to the proper angle, she took up the wild strain. 

 Then all the others came running out and joined in, each according to 

 his voice, but all singing that wild wolf hunting song, howling and 

 yelling, rolling and swelling, high and low, in the cadence of the hills. 



They sang me their song of the West, the West: 



They set all my feelings aglow; 

 They stirred up my heart with their artless art, 



And their song of the long ago. 



Again and again thej^ raised the cry, and sang in chorus till the whole 

 moonlit wood around was ringing with the grim refrain — until the 

 inhabitants in the near city must have thought all the beasts l)roken 

 loose. But at length their clamor died away, and the wolves returned, 

 slunk back to their dens, silently, sadl}' 1 thought, as though they 

 realized that they could indeed join in the hunting song as of old, but 

 their hunting days were forever done. 



