WOLVES. 
208 
deed sufficient to establish, — that this morbific poison is not only 
capable of being communicated from the lower animals to man, 
but acts (as we have reason to believe the variolous poison 
does) as a more virulent poison on the human body. For al- 
though the same poison in the horse, where it is diffused over 
the body, in the form to which the name of “ Button Farcy” is 
given, producing numerous hard pustules which may go to ul- 
ceration, is often much more acute in its progress than when 
confined to the nostrils and having the name of Glbnders, yet 
by far the greater number of cases of disease in the horse, re- 
sulting from this poison, are chronic, and many of them, at least 
for long, seem quite local ; — whereas, in the human body, bad 
typhoid symptoms seem always to attend the first stage of the 
disease thus excited, and even when they are got over, as in 
one of the cases given by Dr. Elliotson, the pustules soon de- 
generate into intractable ulcers, and the general health has ap- 
peared to be irretrievably broken. 
Monthly Journal of Medical Science , January 1851. 
WOLVES. 
BY THE AUTHOR OF “ LORD BACON IN ADVERSITY,” &C. 
[Abridged from Bentley’s Miscellany for March, 1851.] 
“A PECULIAR interest, attaches to the wolf, from the close ana- 
logy which in all its essential features it presents to the faithful 
companion of man. So close indeed is the analogy, that some 
of the ablest zoologists, the celebrated John Hunter included, 
have entertained the opinion that dogs, in all their varieties, and 
wolves, have descended from a common stock. With the ex- 
ception of an obliquity in the position of the eyes, there is no 
appreciable anatomical difference between these animals. The 
question is one of difficulty ; but we believe we are correct in 
stating, that the majority of the highest authorities agree in the 
belief that these animals are not derived from a common parent, 
but were original^ distinct, and will ever so continue. There 
are several species of wild dogs known, quite distinct from the 
wolf; and although the opportunities have been numerous for 
dogs resuming their pristine form by long continuance in a 
savage state, no instance has ever occurred of their becoming 
wolves, however much they might degenerate from the domes- 
tic breed. The honest and intelligent shepherd dog was re- 
garded by Buffon as the “fons et origo ,” from which all other 
