THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
and official returns show that more than half a million head 
of cattle and smaller live stock are annually destroyed by 
wolves in European Russia alone. 
“In Saxon times wolves were very abundant [in Great Britain]; and 
even so recently as the reign of Elizabeth they were to be seen on Dart- 
moor and in the Forest of Dean. In the New Forest they were hunted in 
the twelfth century. It would seem that the last English wolf was slain 
some time during the reign of Henry VII. In Scotland, however, they 
persisted very much longer. So recently as 1743 was the last killed. But 
before this period they had begun to get exceedingly scarce, for the price 
of a skin in 1620 is quoted at £6: 13:4. In Ireland wolves lingered yet 
longer; about 1770 is believed to be the date of their final extinction in 
that island.... Much legend has collected around this fierce carnivore. 
Aristotle, usually accurate in the main, still states more of wolves than ex- 
perience warrants.’”” Pliny, unable to sift truth from falsehood, was in this 
matter ‘fan eager listener to all old women’s tales.” Zlian added to his 
marvels and asserted that the wolf cannot bend its head back; if it should 
happen to tread on the flower of the squill it at once becomes torpid. So 
the wily fox, fearing his more powerful enemy, takes care to strew his path 
with squills. The conversion of men into wolves was a well-known super- 
stition, dating from Grecian and Roman times; it formed the basis of much 
of the witchcraft persecutions of the Middle Ages and onward, and has 
left its mark in folk-lore, e.g. the Wolf in “‘Red Riding Hood.” #8 
Of our western coyote, red, barking, or prairie wolf, one 
might write a long chapter, but its biography is easily accessible 
in many books; and I myself have written it at 
length in my ‘‘Wild Neighbors,”’ under the caption 
“The Hound of the Plains.” Formerly this wolf (or wolves, 
for the old Canis latrans has latterly been divided ® into a 
dozen or more species) was to be found from the Ohio prairies 
west to the Pacific, and from Great Slave Lake to Guatemala; 
but now none is seen east of the dry Plains, where it continues 
to maintain itself because its natural enemies have been killed 
off, and because it is extremely clever in raiding the farmers’ 
poultry yards, pigsties, and lamb-folds; in fact, in some regions 
it interferes seriously with ranching industries — far more so 
192 
Coyote. 
