SOCIAL HABITS OF THE WOLF. 
259 
in a company of wolves, on the occasion of the re-partition of divi- 
dends. 
htevertheless, the old he wolf helps himself first. The she wolf 
teaches her young ones to box their tracks, or walk in single file, 
each carefully placing his foot in the track of the last. 
One day in the severe winter of 1829-30, I met six big wolves 
thus crossing the Loire dry, one behind the other, step into step. 
You would have sworn in examining their tracks on the snow, 
that only one wolf had passed. 
Experienced hunters and game keepers are not deceived by 
these appearances. They attentively scrutinize the footprint, and 
conclude by recognizing the exact number of beasts on the trail. 
Many authors assert that wolves observe the same tactics when 
they have to pass a stream or a river, and that they swim in suite 
after each other, holding on by the tail. I have never been an oc- 
ular witness to this, which I do not therefore dispute. 
Every one has heard more or less of the white wolf ; there are 
no wolf countries where the black wolf is not known. 
The black wolf, which was formerly very common in the north 
of France, especially in Normandy and Picardy, is not even a va- 
riety of the species, and its color is only an accident. All the gray 
species are subject to become black or white, for the very natural 
reason that black and white are the elements of gray. But let no 
one be deceived ; the tendency of any species to change color is a 
demonstration of its domesticability. 
The she wolf brings forth in the month of April ; she goes with 
young sixty days, like the bitch. The litter is sometimes of six, 
often of five cubs. She chooses for her dwelline^ the hi<ih heath, 
the holms, the thorny underbrush of the forest. At the age of 
four or five months the cubs begin to earn their livelihood ; but the 
mother does not yet abandon them ; she does not resign herself to 
separate from them, and to let them loose upon society until their 
education is perfectly finished, and she supposes them expert enough 
to escape without too much risk from the thorny passes with 
which the career of all wolves is thick strewn. 
It is wonderful to see how, toward the end of August, at the 
epoch when the tribulations of the young wolves commence, these 
