THE WOLF. 247 



rery wildest species exhibit this quality of foresight, and act with cir- 

 cumspection only the most violent pangs of hunger ever changes this 

 characteristic. 



Their food usually consists of mammals and birds, but all the species 

 have a preference for carrion ; nor do any members of the family refuse 

 to make a meal of reptiles, fish, or molluscs. In addition they will eat 

 honey, fruit, roots, buds, grass, and moss. The females usually bring 

 forth four to nine at a birth, and are always most devoted mothers. 



The family is divided into three genera ■d.n(\ fifty-four species. 



I.— GENUS CAN IS. 



This genus contains fifty-two species ; and the one with which we sha*. 

 begin our account is that which plays so important a part in our nursery 

 tales and in the mythology of many nations, the Wolf. 



THE WOLF. 



The Greek and Roman writers speak of the wolf with a kind of super- 

 stitious awe, on account of the supernatural qualities they attributed to 

 it. In Greece the wolf was especially connected with the worship of 

 Apollo, and near the great altar at Delphi, the chief seat of the worship 

 of that divinity, there stood an iron wolf. In Rome the wolf was re- 

 garded as the nurse of the founders of the city ; and the brazen she-wolf, 

 with Romulus and Remus sucking her, is still one of the ornaments of 

 Rome. In the mythology of our ancestors the wolf occupies a distin- 

 guished place as the favorite animal of Woden. Two wolves sit before 

 his feet, and when the end of all things is at hand, one of them shall 

 devour the sun, the other the moon. Then comes the " Twilight of the 

 Gods." The wolf Fenris breaks loose ; his lower jaw reaches to the 

 earth, the upper one to heaven ; he swallows up Woden himself, and fire 

 and flame spread over the earth and the whole universe is consumed. 

 Christianity modified these stories. Woden and his wolves became the 

 Wild Huntsman and his dogs; and the wolf became, in popular supersti- 

 tion, one of the forms assumed b)' magicians and witches, or imposed by 

 them on their victims. Gervase of Tilbury writes : " We have often seen 

 in England men changed a* the full moon into wolves, which kind of men 



