IX. CAUSE OF EXTINCTION. 



IT was some satisfaction to the admirers of the 

 wolfish race in Pennsylvania to feel that their dis- 

 appearance was not entirely due to the hunters. 

 Comparatively few were trapped or shot, as the bounty 

 records will show. Rev. Joseph Doddridge, in his 

 "Notes," ascribes the rapid diminution of wolves in 

 Pennsylvania to hydrophobia. He relates several in- 

 stances where settlers who were bitten by wolves per- 

 ished miserably from that terrible disease. Man, how- 

 ever, was directly responsible for their passing out of 

 sight. By destroying their food supply they were com- 

 pelled to die of starvation or strike for a new country. 

 The prevalence of wolves in McKean County in the 

 late seventies was due to their desire to pass through 

 there to New York State. The open country north of 

 Allegheny and Cattaraugus Counties, in New York, 

 made it impossible for them to reach the Adirondack 

 wilderness, and they congregated in the vast forests of 

 original timber in Potato Creek, where they starved to 

 death and were slaughtered or poisoned. The black 

 wolves of the Seven Mountains made a similar effort 

 to reach the North Woods. David Frantz, a celebrated 

 wolf hunter who lived near Coburn, Centre County, 

 said that in 1898 and 1899 wolf tracks were observed 

 across Penn's Valley, passing in a northerly di- 

 rection. Wolves were seen and tracked in Brush Val- 



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