DEPREDATIONS BY WOLVES 
corners, surrounding a pond in which some fleeing victim has 
sought safety, or otherwise acting in concert, will exhaust and 
pull down an animal large enough to furnish a meal for all — 
if the later ones are not too slow in arriving! A band of arctic 
wolves will depopulate a district of reindeer in one winter; 
only the polar bear and the musk ox can hold their own against 
them. Very pretty tactics are often employed, especially by 
coyotes, whose work must be doubly strategic because done 
in the open. Plainsmen still call a particularly big old gray 
wolf a “buffalo runner,” recalling the time when the principal 
prey of those of the West was the bison. ‘‘The wolves seldom 
molested the buffaloes unless they were disabled by wounds or 
sickness. The young calves were what they were after when 
they skulked through the herd, dodging the old bulls and angry 
cow buffaloes in the tall bunch grass of the plains.” 
Dwellers on the frontier, or in thinly settled and mountainous 
districts, suffer much from the depredations of the bigger wolves, 
which maim more than they kill and eat, when famine, or the 
lesson learned from some previous success, leads them to attack 
domestic animals. This destructiveness, and the value of their 
pelts, have led to their extermination throughout the more thickly 
settled parts of both the United States and Canada, and even 
in the far West they have become scarce since the disappearance 
of bison, elk, and blacktail. A black variety still haunts the 
recesses of the Florida everglades. In the ranching districts, 
however, cattle and sheep keep many bands alive wherever 
there are rocky fastnesses to which they may retire, in spite of 
the traps, poisons, and guns which they understand so much 
better than did their forefathers; but they are not as adaptable, 
clever, and safe as the coyotes. .In Europe, as we learn from 
Harting,’ Aflalo,!™ and other authorities, they still 
persist on the continent even in France and Spain, 
wherever a rough country gives them harbor, whence they may 
race forth on winter nights to ravage the farms and pastures; 
191 
Historical. 
