IV THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS 113 



after the manner of fox-hunting which is largely- 

 pursued now as a sport at army posts in the West, 

 and here and there by townspeople and ranchmen. 

 It began, I think, and has been most diligently 

 developed among the colonists in the interior of 

 British Columbia, where a pack of hounds, re- 

 cruited largely from the famous Badminton Ken- 

 nels, in England, has long been maintained at 

 Ashcroft, in the Fraser valley. 



The hounds take to this new sport readily, yet 

 the wily and swift-footed wolf is often able to keep 

 out of their way, and save his brush in some rocky 

 retreat, after leading the horsemen a run which 

 sets every nerve a tingling. 



Next to the wolverine, the prairie-wolf is, per- 

 haps, the wariest of the animals — not excepting 

 the fox — against which the trapper pits himself. 

 To poisoned meat he falls a victim through his 

 gluttony, and in this way the ranchmen destroy 

 great numbers annually ; but he is rarely trapped. 

 The old writer Say tells, with a touch of glee, how 

 his friend Titian Peale, who was a naturalist as 

 well as a painter, was baffled in trying to catch a 

 live coyote for his father's famous Museum — one 

 of the sights of old Philadelphia. 



Peak's first experiment was with a " figure-four," 

 and came to nought because a wolf burrowed under 

 the floor and pulled the bait down between the 

 planks. " This procedure," sagely remarks Mr. 

 Say, "would seem to be the result of a faculty 

 I 



