The Wolf 317 



Turning now to the most celebrated, as well as the 

 largest and fiercest member of this family, we find that the 

 Scandinavian wolf is in many places increasing in numbers, 

 despite the various means which are made use of for its 

 destruction. L. Lloyd (" Scandinavian Adventures ") 

 ascribes this to immigration from Russia and Finland. 

 However this may be, recent writers still echo the lamen- 

 tations of Olaus Magnus, and of quaint old Bishop Pontap- 

 pidan ("Natural History of Norway") to the effect that 

 the country is overrun by them. Thus Von Grieff asserts 

 that in many localities " the wolf taxes the peasant higher 

 than the crown," and J. A. Strom expresses himself to 

 much the same effect. 



A wolf will eat any sort of flesh, irrespective of its kind 

 or condition, and when pressed by hunger he consumes 

 vegetable substances also. Pontappidan says that one was 

 killed whose " stomach was filled with moss from the cliffs 

 and birch tops." Humboldt states that famishing wolves 

 swallow earth like the Otomac Indians on the Orinoco. 



It is the common or gray wolf the only one known in 

 Scandinavia, although at one time Nilsson attempted to 

 erect its black variety, Canis lycaon, into a species which 

 those authors referred to speak of when deploring this 

 creature's destructiveness. Lloyd thinks that it cannot be 

 extirpated from the mountain and forest regions of Sweden 

 and Norway. The animal is prolific. A female, after ten 

 weeks' gestation, brings forth from four to six, and even nine 

 cubs. They are born in burrows, inherit great constitutional 

 vigor, and are well tended upon the part of their parents. 

 Whatever else may be denied the wolf, some praise for do- 



