DANGEROUS ANIMALS OF EUROPE 191 



in size. Some can scarcely be considered as dangerous 

 in any sense. Few of the Pyrenean bears which reach 

 England are formidable. They are neither large, 

 nor have they good coats, but are dwarfed and dusty- 

 coloured, inferior in every way to the splendid brown 

 bears of Northern Russia. In Switzerland they occa- 

 sionally reach a large size ; some have been killed 

 which weighed as much as 420 Ibs. But the Swiss 

 bears, even when less rare than they are now, were 

 always more formidable to sheep than to the shepherds. 

 The European wolf is also in the main a destroyer 

 of livestock and game, and has not aroused that 

 intense hatred which its attacks on children seem to 

 have caused in primitive England and Wales.* 



The only bird besides the albatross which may 

 be accurately included in the list of animals dangerous 

 to human life, is still an inhabitant of Europe. This 

 is the lammergeier, or bearded vulture, a few pairs 

 of which still nest in the high Alps. The French 

 name ' gypaete,' or ' vulture eagle/ best describes the 

 bird, which has the appetite and almost the dimen- 

 sions of a condor, and more than the strength 

 of any eagle. The wings sometimes measure 



* A melancholy contradiction to this view appeared in the papers at the opening 

 of the present year. A husband and wife had engaged to walk across Europe, 

 pushing a wheelbarrow. In Hungary they were attacked by wolves, and though 

 the wife shot one which had seized her husband, the others bit her so severely that 

 she died in a few hours. 



