Gray-wolf 761 



Zoo were born in March and Aj)ril, the earhcst March i8, the 

 latest April 19. Even in the Red River Valley they are born 

 about the same time, as the following from Henry's Journal 

 attests:'" 



[Park River Post on Red River] "April 7, 1801. One of 

 my men brought in 3 Wolves of this year which he had 

 found in a hole in the ground; they sometimes have their 

 young in a hollow log or stump. * * * Another of my 

 men brought in 6 young Wolves he had found in one hole." 



"Shortly after birth and long before their eyes were open matkk- 

 the mother-wolf [in the Philadelphia Zoo] would come to the f^-^ 

 front of the enclosure with one of her pups in her mouth, some- ^^inct 

 times returning for another one or two, but all were never 

 brought out at one time; one was carried about for a while 

 and then returned. This was generally done when the keeper 

 was in the back passage or adjoining cage. Nervousness 

 from fear of harm to her babies seems, in most cases at least, 

 to have been the cause of this habit." 



The maternal instincts of the she-wolf are of a high order. 

 Carson, above c]uoted, remarks: 



"We have no instance of a Gray-wolf killing or eating her 

 young, but Prairie-wolves in our Zoo have not only killed their 

 young, but eaten them when they have died from other causes." 



When I was at Sidney, Ohio, March, 1902, I met an old 

 hunter who related a curious and interesting story that illus- 

 trates the motherliness of the she-wolf. About twenty years 

 before, when he lived in Wisconsin, a bounty of ten dollars 

 each was put on Gray-wolves, and he spent a good deal of 

 time hunting them. One day he saw a Wolf come to the river 

 to drink. He shot and killed it, then found that it was a 

 female suckling young. He searched many days for the nest 

 and could not find it. 



Two weeks later he shot another female Wolf coming out 

 of a hollow log. She also was suckling young. He crawled 

 into the log and found 13 Wolf pups of two different sizes — 



'"Journal, 1897, pp. 174-5- 



