150 NATURAL HISTORY. 



these sons being, eleven out of twelve of them, shepherds said of the youngest : " Benjamin shall 



ravin as a Wolf : in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil." 

 Homer also, in his immortal " Iliad," frequently brings in the Wolf, giving with a few master- 

 touches a vivid picture of the hated brute's habits : 



" Sudden as hungry "Wolves the Kids purloin, 

 Or Lambs, which haply some unheeding swain 

 Hath left to roam at large the mountains wild ; 

 They, seeing, snatch them from beside the dams, 

 And rend incontinent the feeble prey." 



" As Wolves that gorge 



The prey yet panting, terrible in force, 

 When on the mountains wild they have devour' d 

 An antler'd Stag new-slain, with bloody jaws 

 Troop all at once to some clear fountain, there 

 To lap with slender tongues the brimming wave ; 

 No fears have they, but at their ease eject 

 From full maws flatulent the clotted gore." 



The ancient Greeks and Romans had a very curious superstition about the Wolf. They believea 

 that if a man and a Wolf met, and the beast saw his human enemy before the latter caught sight of 

 him, the man became dumb. Hence the Greek proverb, XtW itiw, " to see a Wolf," that is, to be 

 struck dumb. Virgil expresses the same notion in his " Bucolics " 



" Nunc oblita mihi tot cannina : vox quoque Moerim 

 Jam fugit ipsa : lupi Moerim videre priores." * 



There are many ancient proverbs of which the Wolf is the theme ; one is often used now, " hipus 

 infabula" used in much the same sense as " Talk of the Devil." Then there is " ovem lupo committere," 

 equivalent to our " set the Fox to watch the Geese "; " hac urget lupus, hac canis angit," of much the same 

 significance as " a Donkey between two bundles of hay "; and many others. 



We have said that the Wolf is everywhere detested ; there is an historical exception to this. 

 He was held in great veneration and even worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, who often 

 embalmed his body, and one of whose cities, Lycopolis (the modern Siout), was named after him. 



The Common Wolf is still very abundant in many parts of Europe, being .found in Spain, Greece, 

 Italy, France, Eastern Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and Lapland. In Switzerland 

 they are now rare, and in the remainder of the Continent extinct. 



It is very curious to think that such a beast as the Wolf should now nourish in a neighboui 

 ing country like France, as we have quite forgotten the time since any plague of the sort existed 

 in England. And yet it is barely two centuries since they were finally got rid of, and in 

 early times they were quite common over a great part of the island, and, of course, did an immense 

 amount of damage. One Saxon king, Edgar, "applied himself to their extirpation in earnest, 

 enlisting English criminals in the service, by commuting the punishment awarded for their crimes to 

 the delivery of a certain number of Wolves' tongues, and liberating the Welsh from the payment of 

 the tax of gold and silver, on condition of an annual tribute of three hundred Wolves. But the vast 

 wild tracks and deep forests of ancient Britain were holds too strong even for his vigorous measures. 

 What the number and consequent danger had been may be imagined from the necessity that existed, 

 in the previous reign of Athelstan (A.D. 925), for a refuge against their attacks. Accordingly, a 

 retreat was built at Flixton in Lancashire, to save travellers from being devoured by these gaunt 

 hunters. The Saxon name for the month of January, ' Wolf-moneth,' in which dreary season 

 hunger probably made the Wolves more desperate, and the term for an outlaw, ' Wolfshead,' implying 

 that he might be killed with as much impunity as a Wolf, also indicate the numbers of these 

 destructive beasts, and the hatred and terror which they inspired. 



* Virgil, EC. ix., 53: 



" All, all forgotten now, those youthful lays ; 

 My voice will follow, ay, my voice decays ; 

 The Wolf hath eyed me first, hath Moeris eyed." 



