62 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 
duced on the same plane with the forehead. Its ears.are higher and somewhat nearer to each’ 
other ; their length exceeds the distance between the auditory opening and the eye. Its loins 
are more slender, its legs longer, feet narrower, and its tail is more thinly clothed with fur. 
The shorter ears, broader forehead, and thicker muzzle of the American Wolf, with the 
bushiness of the hair behind the cheek, vive it a physiognomy more like the social visage of 
an Esquimaux dog than the sneaking aspect of an European Wolf. Buffon enumerates black, 
tawny-gray and white, as the colours exhibited by the fur of the European Wolves. In the 
American northern Wolves the gray colour predominates, and there is very little of the 
tawny hue. The general arrangement of the patches of colour is, however, nearly the same 
in both races. 
Notwithstanding the above enumeration of the peculiarities of the American 
Wolf, I do not mean to assert that the differences existing between it and its 
European congener are sufficiently permanent to constitute them, in the eye of the 
naturalist, distinct species. The same kind of differences may be traced between 
the foxes and native races of the domestic dog of the new world and those of the 
old; the former possessing finer, denser, and longer fur, and broader feet, well 
calculated for running on the snow. These remarks have been elicited by a com- 
parison of live specimens of American and Pyrenean Wolves; but I have not 
had an opportunity of ascertaining whether the Lapland and Siberian Wolves, 
inhabiting a similar climate with the American ones, have similar peculiarities 
of form, or whether they differ in physiognomy from the Wolf of the south of 
Europe. I have, therefore, in the present state of our knowledge, considered it 
unadvisable to designate the northern Wolf of America by a distinct specific 
appellation, lest I should unnecessarily add to the list of synonyms, which have 
already overburthened the science of Zoology. The word occidentalis, which I 
have affixed to the Linnean name of Canis lupus, is to be considered as merely 
marking the geographical position of the peculiar race of Wolf which forms the 
subject of this article. I have avoided adopting, as a specific name, any of the 
appellations founded on colour, because they could not with propriety be used to 
denote more than casual varieties of a species, in which the individuals shew such a 
variety in their markings. 
Wolves are found in greater or less abundance in different districts, but they 
may be said to be very common throughout the northern regions ; their foot- 
marks may be seen by the side of every stream, and a traveller can rarely pass 
anight in these wilds without hearing them howling around him. They are very 
numerous on the sandy plains which, lying to the eastward of the Rocky Mountains, 
extend from the sources of the Peace and Saskatchewan rivers towards the 
