182 
WOLF. 
hunters complete the business by stabbing him with 
their daggers. 
When very young, that is, during the first year, 
wolves are very docile, and even caressing ; they 
are quiet, and may be kept with poultry and other 
animals without doing any mischief : but this good 
humour only lasts about a year and a half, when 
their natural ferocity returns, and they can no 
longer be suffered to remain at large. “ I reared 
one till the age of eighteen or nineteen months,” 
says Buffon, “ in a court along with fowls, none 
of which he ever attacked ; but for his first essay 
he killed the whole in one night, without eating 
any of them. Another, having broken his chain, 
ran off, after killing a dog with whom he had lived 
in great familiarity. I kept a she wolf three years 
in a large court ; and though shut up, when very 
young, along with a gre-hound of the same age, 
she would never suffer him to approach her. She 
provoked, she attacked, she bit the dog, who at 
first only defended himself ; but at last he worried 
her 
The wolf grows gray as he grows old, and when 
dead is only valuable on account of his skin, which 
makes a warm durable fur. The rankness of his 
flesh is so great that it is rejected by all other 
animals, and nothing but a wolf will eat a wolf. 
His breath is abominably offensive, and his ap- 
* See the history of the dog for a particular account of this 
transaction. 
