Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 / Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852

The most remarkable specimen, and the best type of the class, was found in the year 1725, in a wood in Hanover. With the appearance of a human being—of a boy about thirteen years of age—he was in every respect a wild animal, walking on all-fours, feeding on grass and moss, and lodging in trees. When captured, he exhibited a strong repugnance to clothing; he could not be induced to lie on a bed, frequently tearing the clothes to express his indignation; and in the absence of his customary lair among the boughs of a tree, he crouched in a corner of the room to sleep. Raw food he devoured with relish, more especially cabbage-leaves and other vegetables, but turned away from the sophistications of cookery. He had no articulate language, expressing his emotions only by the sounds emitted by various animals. Although only five feet three inches, he was remarkably strong; he never exhibited any interest in the female sex; and even in his old age—for he was supposed to be seventy-three when he died—it was only in external manners he had advanced from the character of a wild beast to that of a good-tempered savage, for he was still without consciousness of the Great Spirit.
In other children that were caught subsequently to Peter, for that was the name they gave him, the same character was observable, although with considerable modifications. One of them, a young girl of twelve or thirteen, was not merely without sympathy for persons of the male sex, but she held them all her life in great abhorrence. Her temper was ungovernable; she was fond of blood, which she sucked from the living animal; and was something more than suspected of the cannibal propensity. On one occasion, she was seen to dive as naturally as an otter in a lake, catch a fish, and devour it on the spot. Yet this girl eventually acquired language; was even able to give some indistinct account of her early career in the woods; and towards the close of her life, when subdued by long illness, exhibited few traces of having once been a wild animal. Another, a boy of eleven or twelve, was caught in the woods of Canne, in France. He was impatient, capricious, violent; rushing even through crowded streets like an ill-trained dog; slovenly and disgusting in his manners; affected with spasmodic motions of the head and limbs; biting and scratching all who displeased him; and always, when at comparative rest, balancing his body like a wild animal in a menagerie. His senses were incapable of being affected by anything not appealing to his personal feelings: a pistol fired close to his head excited little or no emotion, yet he heard distinctly the cracking of a walnut, or the touch of a hand upon the key which kept him captive. The most delicious perfumes, or the most fetid exhalations, were the same thing to his sense of smell, because these did not affect, one way or other, his relish for his food, which was of a disgusting nature, and which he dragged about the floor like a dog, eating it when besmeared with filth. Like almost all the lower animals, he was affected by the changes of the weather; but on some of these occasions, his feelings approached to the human in their manifestations. When he saw the sun break suddenly from a cloud, he expressed his joy by bursting into convulsive peals of laughter; and one morning, when he awoke, on seeing the ground covered with snow, he leaped out of bed, rushed naked into the garden, rolled himself over and over in the snow, and stuffing handfuls of it into his mouth, devoured it eagerly. Sometimes he shewed signs of a true madness, wringing his hands, gnashing his teeth, and becoming formidable to those about him. But in other moods, the phenomena of nature seemed to tranquillise and sadden him. When the severity of the season, as we are informed by the French physician who had charge of him, had driven every other person out of the garden, he still delighted to walk there; and after taking many turns, would seat himself beside a pond of water. Here his convulsive motions, and the continual balancing of his whole body, diminished, and gave way to a more tranquil attitude; his face gradually assumed the character of sorrow or melancholy reverie, while his eyes were steadfastly fixed on the surface of the water, and he threw into it, from time to time, some withered leaves. In like manner, on a moonlight night, when the rays of the moon entered his room, he seldom failed to awake, and to place himself at the window. Here he would remain for a considerable time, motionless, with his neck extended, and his eyes fixed on the moonlight landscape, and wrapped in a kind of contemplative ecstasy, the silence of which was interrupted only by profound inspirations, accompanied by a slight plaintive noise.