WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



indiscriminately, the food supply of the wolves was 

 affected. The wolfish diet required meat, and this at 

 times became unobtainable. Crazed with hunger the 

 wolves attacked calves, pigs and sheep, which slow 

 of motion and easily captured, occupied the same 

 relative position to them as had the formerly abund- 

 ant weak and imperfect deer, elk, rabbits and hares. 

 Just as some otherwise harmless men commit murder 

 when crazed by lack of food, the wolves played havoc 

 in farm yards that otherwise they would have left un- 

 molested. But most of the sheep killed by ''wolves" 

 were slain by half-wild, vicious dogs. There are 

 fewer sheep in Pennsylvania today than when there 

 were wolves. What is needed is an efficient dog law. 

 As the result, bounties were put on the wolves, they 

 were hunted unmercifully. Now comes the hue and 

 cry that "bears are killing sheep." Again the dogs are 

 the real and only culprits. Wolves were also useful 

 forest scavengers, cleaning up the neighborhoods of 

 camps and hunters' shambles. E. H. Forbush, the 

 famous State Ornithologist of M'assachusetts. has 

 said: "When I first found wolves feeding on berries 

 I was surprised. It is probable that no land mammal 

 is strictly carniverous." No person stopped to reason 

 if the wolf had a useful purpose in the world — man 

 deliberately acted as if the Wise Maker had erred in 

 creating such animals. All living things have a f^itr- 

 pose; it would be a loss to the world if even the com- 

 mon house flies were completely exterminated. It is 

 an over-production of any one species of things that 



