THE BEAR AND THE WOLF. 
497 
annual sleep, living, meanwhile, upon their own fat ; for they 
never fail to carry a good stock to bed with them in the autumn, 
and they wake up very thin in the spring. Their flesh is said 
to taste like pork. They live on all sorts of fruits and berries, 
Avild cherries, grapes, and even the small whortleberries. Honey 
is well known as one of their greatest delicacies. They also like 
potatoes and Indian corn. They eat insects, small quadrupeds 
and birds, but prefer sweet fruits to any other food. They are 
from four to six feet in length, and three feet in height to the fore- 
shoulders. 
The moose, the stag, and the deer we have already noticed as 
still found within our borders. 
The panther, also, it would seem, has made us quite a recent 
visit. 
Next in size to these larger quadrupeds comes the Wolf. The 
American species measures four or five feet in length, and is rather 
more robust than that of Europe. Formerly it was believed to 
be smaller. We have two varieties in New York, the black and 
the gray, the first being the most rare. They are quite common 
in the northern counties, and are said to destroy great numbers of 
the deer, hunting them in packs of eight or ten. They are par- 
ticularly successful in destroying their prey in winter, for in sum- 
mer the deer take to the water and escape ; but in winter, on the 
ice, the poor creatures are soon overtaken. The hunters say that 
the wolves destroy five deer where one is killed by man. Some 
years after this little village was founded, the howl of the wolf, 
pursuing the deer on the ice, was a common sound of a winter's 
night, but it is now many years, half a century, perhaps, since 
one has been heard of in this neighborhood. 
