WHITE WOLF.
White wolves are quite common in North America. Recently two white wolves were brought to the Zoological Gardens from Russia.
In Siberia and Russia the wolves in winter are literally starving. Gathering in packs, they haunt the roads, and chase the sledges with their unfaltering gallop. Seldom in these days does a human life fall victim; but in very hard winters sledge-horses are often killed, and now and then a peasant. Rabies is very common among wolves. They then enter the villages, biting and snapping at every one. Numbers of patients are sent yearly from Russia and Hungary to the Pasteur Institutes, after being bitten by rabid wolves. In Livonia, in 1823, it was stated that the following animals had been killed by wolves: 15,182 sheep, 1,807 oxen, 1,841 horses, 3,270 goats, 4,190 pigs, 703 dogs, and numbers of geese and fowls. They followed the Grand Army from Russia to Germany in 1812, and restocked the forests of Europe with particularly savage wolves. It is said that in the retreat from Moscow twenty-four French soldiers, with their arms in their hands, were attacked, killed, and eaten by a pack of wolves.
Photo by Scholastic Photo. Co.] [Parson's Green.
PRAIRIE-WOLF, OR COYOTE.
This is the small, grey, thickly furred species found on the prairies.
From very early times special breeds of dogs have been trained to guard sheep against the attacks of wolves. Some of these were intended to defend the flock on the spot, others to run down the wolves in the open. The former are naturally bred to be very large and heavy; the latter, though they must be strong, are light and speedy. Of the dogs which guard the flocks several races still survive. Among the most celebrated are those of Albania and the mountainous parts of Turkey, and the wolf-dogs of Tibet, generally called Tibetan Bloodhounds. The Tartar shepherds on the steppes near the Caucasus also keep a very large and ferocious breed of dog. All these are of the mastiff type, but have long, thick hair. When the shepherds of Albania or Mount Rhodope are driving their flocks along the mountains to the summer pastures, they sometimes travel a distance of 200 miles. During this march the dogs act as flankers and scouts by day and night, and do battle with the wolves, which know quite well the routes along which the sheep usually pass, and are on the look-out to pick up stragglers or raid the flock. The Spanish shepherds employ a large white shaggy breed of dog as guards against wolves. These dogs both lead the sheep and bring up the rear in the annual migration of the flocks to and from the summer pastures. In the west of America, now that sheep-ranching on a large scale has been introduced, wolf-dogs are bred to live entirely with the sheep. They are suckled when puppies by the ewes instead of by their own mothers, and become as it were a part of the flock.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt gives an interesting account of wolf-coursing in Russia, in an article contributed to "The Encyclopædia of Sport" (Lawrence & Bullen). "In Russia the sport is a science," he writes. "The princes and great landowners who take part in it have their hunting-equipages equipped perfectly to the smallest detail. Not only do they follow wolves in the open, but they capture them and let them out before dogs, like hares in a closed coursing-meeting. The huntsman follows his hounds on horseback. (These hounds are the Borzoi, white giant greyhounds, now often seen in England.) Those in Russia show signs of reversion to the type of the Irish wolf-hound, dogs weighing something like 100 lbs., of remarkable power, and of reckless and savage temper. Now three or four dogs are run together. They are not expected to kill the wolf, but merely to hold him.... The Borzois can readily overtake and master partly grown wolves, but a full-grown dog-wolf, in good trim, will usually gallop away from them."
