634 THE DOG. 



one another, step by step, so that not more than one mark may 

 be made, and this to be effaced by the last of the file. When 

 a wolf, alone or along with others, approaches an outhouse 

 or other place where he looks for prey, and finds that it can- 

 not be entered with safety, he abandons for the present his 

 design. When the practice is adopted of laying poisoned 

 carrion in the woods, he suspects the food of dead animals 

 which he meets with in the same situations, and, though 

 famishing, will abstain from the dangerous lure. He knows 

 the effect of fire-arms, and takes the means to keep without 

 their range. 



He is often hunted by hounds trained to the chase ; but 

 no other animal is with such difficulty run down. When 

 forced from his covert in the forest, he boldly strikes off for 

 the next place of safety, though often at a vast distance, en- 

 deavouring to gain time, and put the hounds at fault by 

 bounding from the direct path, by entering pools of water, 

 nay, by crossing the widest rivers, as the Rhine, and swim- 

 ming down to a distance with the current. But should he 

 be unable to reach a place of safety, so that the hounds gain 

 upon him, he turns back for an instant, snaps at the limbs 

 of the foremost dogs, so that he may maim them, and then 

 continues his retreat. 



When Europe was almost one continued forest, the wolves 

 were the subject of continued dread to the inhabitants. Every 

 one is aware of the many allusions in the pages of the classic 

 poets to the ravages of the wolf on the flocks and herds of the 

 southern shepherds. But the northern nations were more 

 subjected to the depredations of this animal, from the greater 

 extent of their forests. With the progress of settlement and 

 cultivation, the wolves of Europe progressively diminished 

 in numbers, but this only by the use of fire-arms, and by in- 

 cessant persecution carried on from age to age. But even 

 yet, wolves are in many parts of Europe so numerous as to be 

 troublesome and dangerous, as in the Pyrenees, and yet more 

 in the countries where large forests exist, as in Poland and 



