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Wild Beasts at Large. 
There is nothing in which the popular mind 
more readily believes, and nothing, therefore, 
which the popular imagination more readily in¬ 
vents, than the wild beast at large. Where it 
cannot be pictured as descending from the 
mountains or emerging from the jungles, it is 
pictured as escaping from the menageries, 
though there are. as a matter of fact, few coun¬ 
tries so completely civilized that the former 
hypothesis is absolutely excluded by the facts. 
For wolf stories, and even for the bear stories 
of comparatively recent date, it is by no means 
necessary to go as far as Russia. One can hear 
the bear stories in Switzerland and the wolf 
stories in France. In the former country wood¬ 
cutters are said to have slain bruin with their 
choppers within the memory of living man. In 
the latter land the conditions for the growth of 
wolf stories were long almost ideal. There 
were just enough wolves in the forests to give 
the stories a solid foundation of fact, while they 
were sufficiently few for the attention of the 
entire country to be concentrated from time to 
time upon the predatory deeds of some one wolf 
in particular. Encyclopaedias attest that French 
peasants have been devoured by wolves in 
Savoy as recently as 1850, and in Brittany as 
recently as 1851; while the further back we go 
in French history the more frequent and the 
more astounding are the wolf stories which we 
encounter. There is the story, for instance, of 
the wolf which invaded the streets of the town 
of Verdun, and was finally killed by the garrison 
of the fortress with a casualty list of two killed 
and five wounded; and there is the greater story 
of the notorious Bete de Gevaudan, which, in 
an age in which there were as yet neither 
electric telegraphs nor newspaper reporters, not 
only aroused the interest of the whole French 
kingdom, but held the interest, to the exclusion 
of most other topics, for about two years. 
One first hears of the Bete de Gevaudan in 
June, 1764. Between that month and the follow¬ 
ing October it had devoured or gravely wounded 
six and twenty persons. The peasants organized 
battues in vain. They succeeded in killing a 
number of comparatively harmless wolves, but 
the particular beast which they sought avoided 
them, and continued its depredations. The 
Governor of Languedoc despatched a company 
of dragoons—fifty-six men in all—to assist in 
the chase, but equally without avail. 'Then the 
Bishop of Mende intervened with a pastoral. 
“A savage beast,” wrote the prelate, “has sud¬ 
denly appeared in our midst, and no one knows 
whence it came. Wherever it appears, there its 
bloody traces are left, and consternation is 
spread. The fields are deserted, the boldest men 
are filled with fear at the sight of the horrible 
beast, and none dare go forth unarmed.” He 
directed, therefore, that prayers should be 
offered up for its suppression; but the pious 
petition received no immediate response. The 
beast eluded pursuit, and the most appalling 
pictures were drawn of its ferocious aspects. 
“This animal,” wrote the Intendant of the 
province, “is of the size of a bullock a year old. 
It has paws as strong as those of a bear, with 
six claws each an inch long. Its jaws are of 
enormous size, the breast wide as that of a 
horse, the body long as that of a leopard, the 
tail stout as a man’s arm and four feet long.” 
One cannot wonder that the King issued an 
edict to enforce the destruction of the monster, 
and that as many as ten thousand men took the 
field against it on a single day. In due course 
came the news that it had been met and 
slaughtered. “Sire,” wrote the Intendant of 
Auvergne to the King, “we are full of joy un¬ 
speakable. M. Antoine de Beauterne, the porte- 
arquebuse of your Majesty, has killed the Bete 
de Gevaudan.” The Sieur de Beauterne was re¬ 
warded with the Cross of St. Louis and a pen¬ 
sion of 1000 livres, and the country for a while 
breathed freely. The recompense and the re¬ 
joicings, however, were alike premature. The 
Sieur had killed a wolf, but not the wolf, which 
after a brief interval, renewed its ravages; and 
fresh measures had to be taken against it. In 
place of powder and shot, poison was this time 
employed. Dead dogs poisoned with nux 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
vomica, pounded glass, and dried sponge were 
strewn about the country, but though many 
wolves were killed by this means, the Bete de 
Gevaudan continued running its ferocious 
course. In the end a peasant shot it, and the 
body was packed up and remitted to Paris for 
examination. It turned out that it was not 
a wolf at all, but a species of lynx, and there 
can, of course, be little doubt that, in the course 
of its meteoric career, it had received the dis¬ 
credit of the evil deeds done by a large number 
of wolves scattered over a considerable area. 
The story, however, which has even been made 
the theme of a sensational novel by Elie Berthet, 
lately translated into English by Mr. Sherard, is 
the most striking of all instances of the wild 
beast at large to terrorize a neighborhood, and 
of the extent to which legend embroiders the 
foundation of fact in such a case. 
A wolf, however, and even a lynx, is, at any 
rate, a real beast; and those who spread stories 
concerning the Bete de Gevaudan had some¬ 
thing true and definite to go upon. More strik¬ 
ing are the stories relating to the exploits of 
the wild beasts which the popular imagination 
has invented. The classical illustrations bear¬ 
ing upon this branch of the subject are to be 
found in the stories of the dragons that were once 
A SNOWSHOE RABRIT. 
Photo by Tolhurst. 
believed to inhabit the remoter recesses of the 
Alps. If these belonged to mythological times 
it would be idle to refer to them here. But they 
belong to comparatively modern times—to a 
period of the eighteenth century, in fact, only 
slightly anterior to that of the stories of the 
Bete de Gevaudan above related—and they were 
believed, not only by peasants who could not be 
expected to know better, but also by learned 
men in the van of scientific thought. Professor 
Scheuchzer, of Zurich, for instance, was the 
friend of Leibnitz and Sir Isaac Newton, the 
first scientist to advance a §erious theory of 
the causes of glacier motion, and a daring as¬ 
sailant of the contemporary views on witch¬ 
craft. But this same Professor Scheuchzer not 
only collected and collated dragon stories, but 
avowed his personal belief in their veracity. He 
was led to the investigation of the subject by 
the discovery of a “dragon stone”—a jewel, that 
is to say, alleged to have been cut out of the 
head of a sleeping dragon—in a museum of 
curiosities at Lucerne. This seemed to him 
sufficient a priori evidence of the existence of 
dragons, and he proceeded to gather a posteriori 
proofs. He reports, for example, the narrative 
of John Tinner, of the Commune of Frumsen, 
“an honorable man whose word can be trusted,” 
who had a personal encounter with a monster 
of the,kind. “Its length,” he said, “was at least 
seven feet; its girth was about that of an apple 
tree; it had a head like the head of a cat, but 
no feet whatsoever. He said that he struck and 
slew it with the assistance of his brother 
Thomas, and he added that, before it was killed 
the inhabitants of the vicinity complained that 
the milk was drawn from the udders of their 
cows, and that they could never discover the 
author of ’he mischief, but that after the serpent 
was killed the mischief ceased.” That is one 
story. Another is that of the Prefect of 
[March 9, 1907. 
Lucerne, who on a dark night saw a flying 
dragon issue from one of the caves of Pilatus: * 
“While it was flying it threw out sparks, just as 
the red hot horshoe does when hammered by a 
blacksmith. My first impression was that I 
saw a meteor, but after careful observation, I 
recognized that it was a dragon from the nature 
of its movements and the structure of its limbs.” 
And so forth, the stories filling many pages of 
text, and being illustrated by many lurid en¬ 
gravings, for the reproduction of some of which 
Sir Isaac Newton paid. Their origin presum¬ 
ably is to be sought in the superstitious terrors 
of intoxicated men, and they are therefore of 
little interest to the student of natural history. 
They are of great interest, however, to the 
student of the workings of the human mind, 
showing with what zeal the credulity of the 
vulgar seizes and embellishes, and even on oc¬ 
casion invents, alarming legends of mysterious 
wild beasts.—London Field. 
Gun Licenses. 
Schenectady, N. Y., Feb. 24.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: I have lately been reading sev¬ 
eral letters in Forest and Stream about gun 
licenses. I would like tO' contribute a little to 
what has been written on the subject. 
I have had quite a lot of experience with the 
different classes of our foreign population in 
the last five years in the line of game protection 
and find that most of the violations of the game 
laws are to be laid at their doors so as to speak. 
Now I would suggest that we have a law passed 
making a license fee of $1 for every one that 
carries a gun and that when any one applies for 
a license make him prove that he is an American 
citizen before a license is granted. Then give 
them a numbered tag that must be fastened to 
the gun and provide a severe penalty for any one 
caught carrying a gun in the woods without a 
tag and license. 
If this were done the game protectors could 
then enforce the law in good deal better shape 
than they can at present. 
Our game in the county has been very abund¬ 
ant the past season, especially rabbits. I have 
not seen so many in a good many years, and 
there are a fine lot of partridges left over for 
next fall’s hunting. Squirrels do not appear to 
be as plenty as in the past; I think it was be¬ 
cause of a scarcity of nuts this last fall. In 
the county there are a large number of ducks 
-—I think they are sheldrakes—wintering in the 
river about two miles below the city. This is 
the fourth year that they have spent here and 
thus are very tame. I am glad to report that 
there have been no arrests for violations of the 
game laws as yet this year and hope this good 
record w r ill* keep up. Dorp. 
Notes from North Carolina. 
^ Currituck, N. C., Feb. 20.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The yacht Grace R. IV. was at Curri¬ 
tuck this week. On board were Com. C. F. 
Hotchkiss and his friends Messrs. G. W. Wells 
and Albert Wells, of Southbridge, Mass.; Geo. 
A. Kent, Binghamton, N. Y.; B. W. King, of 
New York city, and C. Lewis, of E. City, N. C. 
They spent three days duck, goose and swan 
shooting and left yesterday for the great swamps 
of Dare and Hyde counties for bear, deer and 
wild turkeys. The shooting at Currituck since 
the middle of December has been far behind the 
average. There has been an abundance of game, 
but they took the ocean on the rising of the 
sun and generally remained outside until dark. 
This is unusual at Currituck and we confess our 
inability to explain it. The gartae wardens are 
vigilant and have several cases to be tried dur¬ 
ing the next term of superior court. 
More Anon. 
CAMP SUPPLIES. 
The camp su'plies to be complete, should include 
Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, Peerless Brand 
Evaporated Milk and Borden’s Malted Milk, all of which 
contain substantial nourishment in compact form, and 
supply every milk or cream requirement.— Adv. 
