232 THE WOLF. 



The Wolf has great strength, especially in the 

 muscles of his neck and jaws : he can carry a Sheep 

 in his mouth, and run off with it without any diffi-* 

 cuky. When reduced to extremity by hunger, we 

 are told by Pontoppidan that he will swallow great 

 quantities of mud, in order to allay the uneasy sen- 

 sations of his sto.riach. His sense of smelling is pe- 

 culiarly strong : lie scents the track of animals^ and 

 follows it with great perseverance. The odour of 

 carrion strikes hini at the distance of near a league. 

 In the year 1764, an animal of this kind commit- 

 ted peculiar ravages in some particular districts of 

 Gevaudan in Languedoc, and became the terror of 

 the whole countr}'. If the accounts then given in 

 the Paris Gazette may be trusted, he was known to 

 have destroyed at least twenty persons, chiefly wo- 

 men and children. W^ith the usual aggravation of 

 popular description, he was represented by some who 

 had seen him, as far surpassing in size the rest of 

 his species, and as striped somewhat in the manner 

 of a Tiger. Public prayers are said to have been of- 

 fered up for his destruction. 



Notwithstanding the savage nature of the Wolf, 

 he is still capable, when taken young, of being 

 tamed. A remarkable instance of this, we are told, 

 was exhibited in a Vv^olf belonging to the late Sir 

 Ashton Lever ; which, by proper education, was en^ 

 tirely divested of the ferocious character of its species. 

 In the East, and particularly in Persia, Wolves are 

 exhibited as spectacles to the jieople. When young, 

 they are taugi.t to dance^ or rather to perform a kind 



