WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 25 



ter. We were so much struck with this account and 

 the noble appearance of the wolf, that we ofifered him 

 one hundred dollars for it, but the owner said he would 

 not part with it for any price." What was the case in 

 the West, was equally true in the Seven Mountains 

 and in Clearfield and Jefferson Counties. One or two 

 of the earliest hunters trained black wolves to act as 

 hunting dogs and companions. These and wild black 

 wolves bred with dogs owned by pioneers, producing 

 a really worthy progeny. St. George Mivart has said 

 "hybrids between the dog and the wolf have proved 

 to be fertile, though for no long period." The writer 

 remembers that in his early boyhood about twenty 

 years ago he saw several of these wolf-dogs. They 

 were intelligent and kindly, and highly prized by their 

 owners, farmers in some of the valleys adjacent to 

 the Seven Alountains. The craze for handsome slieep 

 dogs or collies which struck the valleys about this time 

 resulted in ending the breeding of the wolfish dogs, 

 which to those not in sympathy with them, were tech- 

 nically mongrels, and they eventually disappeared. 

 There are probably few of them now in existence. 

 Their owners declared that they never showed the 

 slightest tendency to revert to a wild state. In Sep- 

 tember, ]S98, the writer visited a farmer, who tilled 

 some back lots at the foot of the mountains on the 

 South side of Brush Valley not far from Minnick's 

 Gap. This old fellow, Abe Royer by name, kept some 

 turkeys, half wild, which were the result of his tame 

 turkey hens crossing with wild gobblers which lived 



