Chapter V: Standardized Wolves (2)

The skin and skull from another animal killed was sent to the American Museum of Natural History of New York. On February 15, 1934, H. E. Anthony, curator, reported that in his judgment the relics were those of a dog.

By 1935 the news magazine _Time_ had already secured a wide public for its news radio broadcast. They had enough nobility or were secure enough to print in their “Letters” of January 21, 1935, an indignant protest from Manitoba against what the correspondent felt was their nature-faking. Axel Nielsen wrote them from Cranberry Portage, Manitoba:

“Your radio representation of the wolf story (Dec. 21, 1934), was most unconvincing. Don’t let yourself be taken in by such stories....

“For 15 years I have traded and prospected in the North, over a vast territory, a belt 1,200 miles long by 500 wide, the top of all the prairie Provinces and beyond. I have met wolves, traveled with them, trailed them. They have trailed me too; they’re a curious lot. But my own sleigh dogs were ten times more dangerous.... Your terrified passengers were probably stretching the imagination valiantly, thanks to the nursery version of wolves in general.... In all my experience, all my questioning of Indians, whose language I speak fluently, I have never yet discovered a single wolf half as dangerous as the ordinary pasture bull, an irritable sow, or a gander.”

THE WOLF PACK IN THE OLD WORLD

The _American Mercury_, July, 1927, statement on the wolf-pack closed:

“The case seems to be definitely settled against the wolf-pack in North America. But there still remains Russia. Well, why not let Russia remain? No one seems to have checked wolf-pack stories in Russia for everyone is so sure they are true. And perhaps they are. Besides, it is a distant country, and the fancy must somewhere have play.”

For many years I sought and found reliable information on conditions in what is now the U.S.S.R. from a learned and far-traveled officer of the Russian Navy, Commander N. A. Transehe, who was doing scientific work in New York. One of our conversations dealt with packs of wolves.

Transehe had journeyed through recognized wolf districts of Russia and Siberia so extensively that few could have had more experience. He never saw more than single wolves or a pair (doubtless male and female), except when it seemed clear that the group was one or both parents with a litter. I suggested that doubtless the wolf-pack, then, existed in Russia only as folklore, but this he considered did not follow at all. “I have lived in New York several years,” he said. “I have never been to Wall Street but I know there is a Wall Street. I have lived in the United States without seeing the Rocky Mountains but I know there are Rocky Mountains. It is that way with packs of wolves in Russia. They are of common knowledge.”

This was the considered view of a Russian whose judgment I had often found good. Also there were two of the foremost authorities on wild animals in the United States, who had expressed to me the feeling that Eurasian wolves might be quite different from ours and that we had better not get too dogmatic about their not running in packs or in general about their being just behavior replicas of American wolves. These authorities were the above-cited Nelson, in several letters and conversations, and C. Hart Merriam in a letter of December 9, 1924.

In 1926, with the hilarious Lake Winnipeg (Ben Cockrane) and Ignace yarns fresh in mind, I found myself an after-dinner speaker at a New York banquet of the Western Universities Club where Kent Cooper, then recently elected General Manager of the _Associated Press_, presided. The opportunity was too good, and I dealt with press faking, spinning yarn after yarn and alleging, in some cases not correctly, that these had been carried by the _Associated Press_.

On July 8, 1926, I received a letter from Jackson S. Elliott, Assistant General Manager, saying that the _Associated Press_ was making “use of the information you gave to us about the wolves not running in packs in order to have our own service as near accurate as possible.”

Three things seemed to me: that the _AP_ carried fewer American wolf stories during the next several years, that most American wolf stories in the press during that time were not of _AP_ origin, but that stories of wolf-packs from abroad failed to decrease in number.

Magazines were active in European tales. Through an article, “Russia of the Hour,” by Junius B. Wood, the _National Geographic Magazine_, for November, 1926, p. 521, said:

“It is only a step from Moscow ... into the wide open spaces. Wolves and bears still roam in the Moscow district, and when the dull winter dusk comes at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the country is under its white mantle of snow, hunger drives them to prey on mankind.

“They boldly attack villages and, this year, even assailed a railroad train of cattle. No peasant ventures alone far outside his village, and one group of 20 men, fancying safety in numbers, was attacked by a wolf-pack. Several were killed and all seriously torn before the pack was driven off.”

The author proved to be a correspondent of the Chicago _Daily News_, with broad experience of travel, including Russia. I wrote him July 14, 1927, with interest in his picture of Russia under the Soviets, asking several questions, mainly ones that would enable me to check on the reports further:

On what railroad and near or between what towns was the cattle train attacked, whence did the information come, when did the attack take place? Could the author furnish corresponding information regarding the twenty men attacked? What further information could he give regarding wolves in Russia, as to their traveling or working in packs? What sources for still more knowledge could he suggest?

Wood wrote from Paris, France, August 31:

“Your letter of July 14, in which a certain unidentified group designated as ‘we’ requests further information concerning my reference to Russian wolves in an article in the _National Geographic Magazine_ has been forwarded to me here. From time to time this coming winter when I return to the U.S.S.R. I will be pleased to send you what information I receive on this subject as wolves are as active a source of news in that country as bootleggers are in the U. S. A.

“This information was taken from Soviet newspapers. The attack on the cattle train standing on a siding was later corroborated from other sources. The attack on the villagers went into details to the extent of giving the names of those killed. Both occurred in the winter of 1926-7. As I do not have my papers here and do not remember the names of villages, railroad, casualties and other details requested in questions 1, 2 and 3, I must postpone answering further until I return to Moscow and have opportunity to look them up.

“Your statement ‘You know, of course, that of all wolf-pack stories published by the American newspapers, more than 75 per cent are without any foundation whatever, and that most of the rest are based on some misapprehension’ indicates a clairvoyance worthy of your fellow explorer ‘Doc’ Cook. It is the first suggestion which has come to me that I ‘know’, or even admit such a theory. It is far from proven.... (I) have serious doubts of your impartiality on the gregariousness of wolves. Though entirely personal, my humble opinion would accept the version of unscientific but not blind natives, including rural correspondents, who are living with wolves in preference to scientists’ dogmas which appeal to publishers and lyceum managers....”

The letter then goes on to valuable and no doubt accurately quoted statements by Russians on wolves, ending with: “Packs are reported as varying from 5 to more than 100 which, while leaving the figures open to doubt, cannot be entirely an optical illusion.”

The promised letter of information from Moscow did not come, but I secured Moscow and general U.S.S.R. information from other sources. Waldemar Jochelson, distinguished Russian traveler and anthropologist, was then in New York and wrote me twice concerning the Wood article, July 27 and August 11, 1927. The letters do not say it outright, but there is to be inferred from them a view that wolf-packs do exist, or at least may exist. In this Jochelson resembles most Russians whom I know. But, again like most, he holds this belief, or this willingness to believe, in spite of, rather than because of, his own experience. He says in the August 11 letter:

“As to my own observations in Siberia before the railroad was built and in places far away from the railroad after its construction I may say that I never saw a single wolf in my numerous voyages except puppies taken from wolf’s den.

“I was told by my reindeer drivers of instances when single wolves attacking herds of reindeer seized calves in spite of the presence of the herdsmen. I remember one case when a reindeer of my team came running and fell exhausted at the entrance of my tent and the team driver told me that the reindeer was pursued by a wolf.

“Siberian hunters told me the following on the habits of the Siberian wolf. He does not like the woods, preferring the tundra and other open places, where he can see and smell his prey from a distance. Grown up wolves do not like company. Wolves have separate dens and she-wolves abandon their puppies when they become able to hunt for themselves.”

The outstanding foreign wolf tale of 1927, not so much in itself as in what it led to, was printed as an _Associated Press_ release by the New York _Times_, February 9:

CAUCASUS WOLVES BOMBED FROM AIRPLANE; HUNGRY PACKS INVADE TOWNS, KILLING PEASANTS

GENEVA, Feb. 8 (AP).--Wolves in the Caucasus have become so numerous that the military authorities there sent an airplane to the infested districts, where poison gas bombs were dropped on packs, killing 200 of the invaders, say reports received by the League of Nations.

Wolves are becoming a menace to the lives of peasants in remote regions of Russia, Poland and some other countries of East Central Europe, the reports say. Ferocious from hunger, these beasts, which have multiplied surprisingly, are reported as frequently making attacks on villages, and in some cases have killed and devoured helpless peasants.

Austria reports that one farmer kept twelve wolves at bay with an axe, wounding them all with powerful swinging blows, and that he was finally rescued by villagers, who saved his life by quick bandaging of bleeding arms and legs.

In the district of Vilna, Poland, packs of wolves, maddened by cold and hunger, descended on the town of Ostrovsk and boldly attacked the inhabitants, who, during several hours, were obliged to put up an organized defense with rifle and shotgun before the savage enemy retired. Poland is reported to have mobilized several regiments to carry on an offensive against wolves.

From Russia come even more terrifying stories. In the rural region wolves by hundreds attack villages and even boldly enter the smaller cities in broad daylight. At Verchofourye five peasants were slain by the beasts before the packs were driven off.

At Orenburg three packs entered the town from different points, throwing the population into a panic and forcing all to barricade themselves in their houses, from which they launched a steady fire, finally killing all the wolves, which tenaciously refused to abandon their attack.

Perhaps through too much Edgar Wallace and E. Phillips Oppenheim I got on this story a slant which appears from a letter written by N. M. Stiles, Foreign News Editor of the _Associated Press_, to their Geneva correspondent, Joseph E. Sharkey, on February 24:

“Please recall your Wolf story which you sent us by mail. We used it on February 8, but before it got to the wires we sent out a note to editors suggesting its elimination for two reasons, the first being that the incidents described were so extraordinary, the second being that the statement that wolves travel in packs has been disputed. However, although the story did not get on the wires, two of the New York papers nevertheless printed it--the New York _Times_ putting it in a box on the front page.

“Now comes a letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson, in which he asks the following somewhat startling and curious question:

‘Do you suppose the wolf dispatch you carried about two weeks ago from Geneva could possibly have been some sort of a cipher message on behalf of almost any sort of secret organization? If so, you are the people to do detective work on its origin. I am putting out two or three lines to trace it from the pseudo-natural history point of view.’

“As you recall we cabled you for confirmation of the story, and you replied that the reports were received unofficially leanations (League of Nations) circles also printed widely Swiss newspapers.’ Now when you come to read this story with the thought in mind that the word ‘wolves’ might be a code word to identify some sort of an organization, as for instance an anti-Bolsheviki outfit, the dispatch does read most interestingly. One can imagine that the organization was putting these messages over on the Swiss newspapers.”

Meantime I tried to find out directly how the League was connected and wrote to the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association of New York City. Their librarian, A. G. F. Aylmer, replied February 24 that they could not understand how the wolf stories should interest the League, and while, like me, they had seen the press despatch, they had no direct information of any similar kind from Geneva. Their office would let me know if they found later that there had been some League connection.

The Stiles letter brought a reply from Sharkey, dated March 12. It puts the case reasonably and shows, particularly in the last of our quoted paragraphs, how normal it is in Europe to read, pass on, and believe wolf-pack stories.

“Answering your letter of February 24 concerning the wolf mail story let me say that this was founded on stories and despatches appearing in Swiss newspapers and on confirmatory talks with secretaries of the League of Nations....

“The League interest in the wolf reports is chiefly economic. The reason was explained to me at the time by ... member of the League information section....

“He told me about recent cases of wolf-packs attacking peasants in the outlying districts. I have never before heard disputed the statement that Russian wolves ‘carry on’ in packs. When I was in Siberia in the winter of 1918-19 a detachment of the British Hampshire regiment which ‘en-sleighed’ from Omsk to Ekaterinburg was attacked by a pack of wolves. The soldiers killed most of them. Participants told me the story personally and I wrote it at the time. The whole history of Russia shows that wolves, desperate with hunger, will attack in packs. The word pack means what it says.

“Since mailing you my story there has appeared a despatch from Constantinople declaring that wolves had attacked people in the outskirts. There is a general idea that the lack of arms in Russia (the Soviet government not favoring extensive arsenals in the outlying districts) has led to a big increase in wolves while the present severe winter has brought the beasts out into the open to secure food. I am sorry I have thrown away all my clippings. Certainly Mr. Stefansson’s theory is startling and interesting and I shall follow any new wolf despatch from a new angle, letting you know, of course, the result.

“The wolf narratives have created no stir in Europe whatsoever because they are regarded as entirely probable, given the circumstances outlined above.”

In due course a letter came from the Information Department of the League of Nations, dated Geneva, March 14, and signed by Arthur Sweetser. This letter vouches for the generally high character of the American press representatives at Geneva, the particularly high character of Joseph E. Sharkey, and the authenticity of the news conveyed by Sharkey so far as concerns its having been received by the League of Nations organization and passed on by them. The general tenor of Mr. Sweetser’s long and careful statement is that, without being exactly able to prove the truth of the stories, he really knows them to be correct, and that therefore the League is neither a victim of propaganda nor indulging in any when it passes on information of this kind. One section of his letter reads:

“... it is a fact that one of our officials has seen 6, 8, or 10 (he does not remember the exact number) despatches from Eastern European countries regarding the increasing depredations and boldness of wolves.... The official in question is a native of that part of Europe and his information, and the experience of his friends as to the habits of wolves, differs from that of Mr. Stefansson.”

On June 1, Sharkey wrote me from Geneva:

“... there may be an inherent difference in the wolves found in North America and those found in Russia, including, of course, Siberia. I personally spent three months in Siberia during the winter of 1918-1919, and persons who had long lived there frequently spoke to me about the depredations of wolves which seemed to run in packs....

“... I want to bring to your attention the testimony of a young Frenchman who with others was conducting an aeroplane trip over Ukraine during the latter part of the war.... He said: ‘I think I can throw some light on that question, for when I and my colleagues were flying over Southern Ukraine we distinctly saw a pack of wolves marching slowly and somewhat solemnly through an opening in the woods. The band seemed to have a distinct formation with one wolf striding some feet ahead of the main pack as if he were their leader. Stragglers were seen in the rear, but the whole band seemed to have a distinct and almost military formation under a distinct leader.’

“I have talked again with the Polish friend whose father did a good deal of hunting of wolves, and he repeated that there is no doubt but that in Poland, where the wolves run over from Russia, the animals operate in packs or groups.”

The _Associated Press_ received as late as March 23 pack despatches from Geneva, “where interest in news of wolf activity is chiefly economic.” One of the despatches closed with these three paragraphs:

“There is a general belief here that the lack of arms in the Russian country districts has led to a big increase in the number of wolves, while the severe winter has brought the beasts into the open to secure food.

“Despite the assertions of many naturalists that wolves do not hunt in packs those who have personal knowledge of wolf hunting, particularly in Poland, assert that wolves, desperate with hunger, will attack in packs.

“In the winter of 1918-19 a detachment of the British Hampshire regiment in Siberia which went by sleigh from Omsk to Ekaterinburg reported an attack by a pack of wolves. The soldiers killed most of the animals by rifle fire.”

These despatches, though I saw them through the kindness of the _Associated Press_, were not sent out to the newspapers--for the reasons given in the already-quoted letter from their Foreign News Editor. On June 22, Stiles wrote further:

“I have just read your article on wolves in the _American Mercury_, and am reminded that I intended to send you a mail story on the subject that we received some time ago from our then correspondent in Moscow, Mr. James A. Mills. We did not make use of it, as it was for the most part a denial of the wolf story that came from Geneva to which you called our attention and which we had already endeavored to ‘kill.’”

The Mills contribution is valuable as a statement of the time from Moscow and is, of course, wholly authentic to the extent that it is a report of what was believed there then about wolves. We accordingly use more than three-quarters of it:

“Moscow, March 17.--Soviet Government officials were amazed at reports reaching the League of Nations recently that Russia was overrun with wolves to such an extent that in the Caucasus region the military authorities had to dispatch airplanes with poison-gas bombs to kill the invaders. The wolves had become so numerous and ferocious, the League reports said, that they devoured human beings and terrified whole cities and towns.

“‘A wolf story is always as good as a fish story,’ said a prominent Soviet official to the correspondent. ‘The more it is exaggerated, the better it sounds. But such stories ought to be left to those whom the late President Roosevelt called “Nature fakers.” It is in poor taste for a dignified, serious organization like the League of Nations to issue them. The story about an airplane being sent in pursuit of packs of these wolves is pure fiction. Russia has its share of wolves, but they are no more numerous nor savage than those of any other country.’

“That Russian wolves are no more abundant or ferocious than their brother-wolves in other countries, is however, not strictly accurate; for statistics show that not only are wolves on the increase in Russia, but their depredations are much more extensive and costly than formerly. The animals are also considerably larger, stronger and fiercer than the average wolf. The increase in their number is attributed to the peasants’ lack of rifles and shot with which to hunt them. It is only within the last year that the Government, yielding to complaints of the peasants that wolves were menacing their sheep and cattle, organized special detachments of professional hunters to exterminate the wolves, giving a premium for each animal killed.[14]

“The loss in sheep, cattle and horses caused by wolves during the last year is estimated at $6,500,000. A full-grown Russian wolf can easily kill a horse, cow, or even a bull. But he rarely, according to Russian authorities on natural history, shows sufficient courage to attack a man. Indeed, the wolf usually runs in terror at the sight of a human being. Even when travelling in large packs, these Russian experts say, wolves avoid meeting a man in daylight; they become dangerous only at night, when they may collectively attack a person along a lonely, dark road in the country.

“Throughout the day they usually sleep, wandering and hunting in search of prey only in the dark. At such times, say the Russian authorities, the most formidable weapon against the animals is not a loaded gun, but a simple flare of artificial light, like a burning match, a bonfire or an illuminated candle, wolves having mortal fear of anything resembling fire.

“Wolves always live in families--the father, mother, two young wolves born the previous year and two baby wolves born in February or March. Throughout the Summer and Autumn they never leave the neighborhood where their young were born. It is only during the mating season in December and January that the male wolves, seeking their female kin, form packs and roam for scores of miles at night.”

This statement would have been more convincing with the last paragraph omitted. For perhaps the Russians might err on packs when they were so wrong, or at least so far from what naturalists think they know, about mating habits and size of litters among wolves. The usual view is that instead of being whelped in pairs, as these Moscow informants had it, wolves are born in litters ranging up to twelve, and that they do not accompany the mother beyond six or eight months. It is a fresh contribution, too, that wolf-packs consist of males that are searching for females.

For the time being the packs had it--Sharkey’s suggestion (and Nelson’s and Merriam’s) that wolves might be different in Europe seemed to be carrying the day.

But there was the matter of wolves attempting to devour the Hampshire regiment of British troops on its sleigh journey from Omsk to Ekaterinburg in 1918-19. Sir Sidney Harmer of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, was a student of animal habits and of animal lore. He should be able to get in touch with members of the Hampshire regiment, and I wrote him June 23. The Museum’s Keeper of Zoölogy, W. G. Calman, replied on the Museum’s behalf July 21 that the Hampshire story was fading “as wolf stories generally do when they are more definitely enquired into.” He forwarded a letter dated July 19 from H. M. Howgrave-Graham, who is Secretary of the Metropolitan Police of London and was (says _Who’s Who_) “Captain in the 1/9 Batln. Hampshire Regiment in India and Siberia, 1914-19.”

“I was in Colonel Johnson’s Battalion (the Ninth Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment) and it happens that I was in charge of the only party which made any considerable sledge journeys during the winter 1918-19.

“My party tried to get to Orenburg from Omsk but didn’t get so far. We went by train to Troitsk and from there we made two sledge journeys, one to Verkhne Uralsk and back and one to Orsk and back. I remember being told that we might see wolves and had hopes of doing so as we travelled a good deal at night. But we were disappointed and never saw or heard any signs of wolves at all....”

Junius B. Wood said in his above-quoted letter to me:

“Your statement ‘You know, of course, that of all wolf-pack stories published by the American newspapers, more than 75 per cent are without any foundation whatever, and that most of the rest are based on some misapprehension’ indicates a clairvoyance worthy of your fellow explorer ‘Doc’ Cook. It is the first suggestion which has come to me that I ‘know,’ or even admit such a theory ... unless you can show that you have tabulated and checked the individual inaccuracies of ‘all’ the newspaper stories which you so sweepingly include, I am extremely sceptical of your ‘75 per cent’ and have serious doubts of your impartiality on the gregariousness of wolves.”

It had never been my intention to claim that three-quarters of all cases had already been studied and found without any vestige of truth. What I meant was that several students whom I know, among them the Chief of the United States Biological Survey, had been investigating for years the cases which came to their attention and that three-quarters of these had proved without foundation--while most of the rest, and perhaps all, were based on misquotations, misunderstandings, and the like.

Particularly with regard to a distant and vast realm like the U.S.S.R. it is hard to study all the cases reported. With increasing frequency through my investigations I began to run upon the name of Sergius Buturlin as a lifelong student of Russian and Siberian wild life and as the foremost authority, among other things, on wolves. Accordingly, I wrote him July 14, 1927, requesting as much general information and as definite information as he felt like giving. He replied August 18:

“I began hunting when about 8 years old, now--I am sorry to say--some 46 years ago. And though my chief interest was always with birds, and my first ornithological paper was published (in _Okhotnichia Gazeta_ or _Hunter’s Journal_, Moscow) in 1888, I was, and am still, very fond indeed of big game shooting (bears, moose, wolves).

“I hunted much in the basin of middle Volga (governments of Simbirsk--now Ulianovsk--Penza, Kazan, Nijny, Nijny-Novgorod) in governments of Tula and Orel, in Livonia and Esthonia, in governments of St. Petersburg--now Leningrad--and Novgorod, in Kirghiz country (between Irtysh and Ob), Kulunda steppe, gov’ts. of Tomsk and Irkutsk, and in the north: Arkhangelsk and Olonetz gov’ts., Kolguev, Novaia Zemlia, Yakutsk, Verkhoiansk, middle and lower Kolyma, some parts of Chukchee-land and Kamchatka.

“As from 1888 on I was always an active contributor to almost all our hunters’ journals, Russian and German (we had _Baltische Waidmann’s Blätter_), and from 1898 always took part, as now, in the editorship of our best hunter’s periodicals, I had a vast amount of correspondence with our most experienced shooting men.

“I can fairly say that we have now too much wolves in our country, but I remember years--for instance, about 1900--when in my native Simbirsk gov. and Penza gov. they were as plentiful as now.

“And never in my life have I seen more than 14 wolves in one pack, and this only twice. And never have I heard a reliable account of such a case. And I have known many old and experienced professional trappers and hunters.

“Usual number is about 5-8.

“But I have seen--it was about half-past five in the morning on the 13th Oct. 1893, near my grandmother’s estate Lava in the middle part of Simbirsk gov., Sura basin,--when a pack of 5 attacked a herd of about 10,000 sheep, frightened about a thousand of them in a narrow ravine and in a few minutes slayed 153 sheep--without even taking away a single sheep, as I drove them away.

“I suppose if I didn’t happen to ride near by I would be informed afterward by shepherds that they were attacked by 50 wolves. It was of course too dark to see, but though there was no snow, the ground was soft from rains, and I could count all their footprints in the morning in the bush and woodland near this ravine.

“I am quite sure that wolves (at least in Russia and Siberia) hunt only in family packs, that is, papa, mamma, young ones of the year and often some ones of the previous brood. And this amounts to 5-8, more rarely 9-10, and quite exceptionally 14 specimens.”

Privately we had disposed of the Russian packs of the winter 1927 but in the newspapers they continued to do well. There appeared in Miami, Florida, (and no doubt elsewhere), a despatch which we copy from the _News_ of June 12:

“MOSCOW, June 11--Ten families were rushed to the Pasteur institute at Moscow from Kalujsky, a small village of the Kuban district, after a large pack of mad wolves had swept down the village street, invading gardens and even entering several homes, biting the residents.”

By now the _Associated Press_ was keen on wolves--indeed had been for six months when Stiles wrote on September 30 that there was in his office a Polish representative who believed stoutly in wolf-packs and that they had received (and, I gather, killed) a press despatch from Warsaw:

“Polish military patrol Russian border attacked by pack wolves dispersed them with gunfire.”

I had long been thinking to write my classmate John B. Stetson who was Minister to Poland. This gave occasion, and he replied June 8, 1928:

“A long time ago I had your letter regarding the possible attacks of wolves....

“While there is much talk about the danger of wolves attacking human beings and while people relate incidents which occurred to them when they have seen wolves which they thought were going to attack them, etc., it is extremely difficult to find specific instances when attacks have been made by wolves....

“I asked the Chief of the Frontier Guards to make an investigation of the various border posts to see if any attacks had been noted along the 1500 kilometer front between Russia and Poland. This region is wild and not densely settled. I enclose herewith the letter which I have received from him.”

The letter from General Minkiewicz had specific information on two cases of wolves, each time three in a group, that had been fired on by frontier guards.

As to whether wolves attack in large packs, the General says:

“Accounts of wolves attacking men sometimes appearing in the press have their origin in the phantasy of correspondents seeking sensational news.

“In a few cases, however, we have noted a very aggressive attitude displayed by wolves and, if they did not dare to attack me, it was only due to the fact that there were but few of them....”

The general commanding the frontier guard, then, had apparently never heard that (around September, 1927) “Polish military patrol Russian border attacked by pack wolves dispersed them with gunfire.”

Lee Smits had suggested my writing David C. Mills of the National Association of Fur Industries as likely to be informed on wolf-packs. Mills wrote from New York, December 9, 1927. A summary of his three-page letter is:

Vladimir Eitington (of Eitington-Schild Co., 226 West 30th Street, New York City) was once followed by wolves in Siberia until he camped and built a fire. He thought there might have been 15 or 25, “but he says that in the dark and under such circumstances, he could not make a rational estimate.”

Many animals have the following habit. Mills cites from his own experience wolves (two), coyotes (several), and bears.

Writer’s opinion, and that of his friend, is that wolves never kill people. Specially cited here is John B. Burnham, noted American authority on wild animals, former secretary of the American Game Protective Association.

Mills thinks that “common knowledge” of wolves and suchlike is usually wrong. Then he has his own summary:

“The information from Russian sources in re. the wolf myth is--

“1st There has never been a scientific investigation of the question.

“2nd That wolves, under ordinary conditions, do not attack humans.

“3rd That mad wolves sometimes enter villages and snap right and left at anything or anyone. I presume this means rabies, as that disease is also found in America among coyotes.

“4th That they have no knowledge of any authenticated case of wolves in packs attacking travelers in sleighs, etc., but do not know that it has never happened.”

In 1928, perhaps for variety, the newspaper wolf-packs transferred their chief European activities to districts other than hackneyed Poland and Russia. The American papers informed us soon after the New Year (we quote the New York _World_ of January 6) that:

“... eleven peasant girls of the Czechoslovakian town of Maramaros Sziget were devoured by wolves when returning from a neighboring village through the forest.”

The Consul General of Czechoslovakia gave preliminary reply to my inquiry on January 10, warning that stories of wolves “especially stories from Vienna are always greatly exaggerated.” On April 2 he wrote that “we have here the reply of the Administration of the Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia stating that the report of killing of eleven peasant girls by wolves in Maramaros Sziget is not true.” Further on the letter says that some wolves were seen near Maramaros Sziget in January “and this was the possible foundation for the wild report of _Neue Freie Presse_.”

November 7 the _Evening Standard_ of London, England, printed a Moscow despatch of even date:

“Wolves are becoming a menace to life in the country districts of North Russia and Siberia....

“... A pack of several hundred attacked a priest and his wife while they were driving from one village to another 100 miles south of Moscow.

“While his wife held the reins, the priest beat off the wolves with a whip. Suddenly a wolf bit one of the horse’s legs. It lurched forward, throwing the priest from the wagon. He was killed by the wolves. The horse carried the woman to safety.

“Similar attacks on persons are reported daily from all parts of the country.--International News Service.”

On this the Chairman of the Amtorg Trading Corporation, Saul G. Bron, wrote me November 25:

“These are termed in the Soviet Union as the ‘big Russian cranberry tree’ tales. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that malicious white-Russian propaganda agencies ... are working overtime and that the comparative scarcity of reliable information about the U.S.S.R. in this country makes a fertile field for the circulation of stories about uprisings, wolves roaming the countryside, etc.”

October 25, C. K. Ogden (whom H. G. Wells has since discussed in the Fifth Book of _The Shape of Things to Come_) wrote me from the Royal Societies Club, London. He told that the De Reszke cigarette had small prize cards in their packages and that the one on The Wolf said “dogs and wolves hunt in packs.” He wrote them and they replied:

“We are sorry that we cannot give you any zoological authority to maintain the view that wolves hunt in packs as stated on the back of picture No. 26 of our Zoological Studies.... The error will be corrected should we have a reprint of the series.”

Through laxity, or real failure of the sources, my wolf record is blank for Europe and Asia during 1930 and 1931--there is no account of tenderly-nurtured wolf children from India, of babies devoured in Siberia, of forays of Rumanian wolves into Czechoslovakia. But in 1932 the times were more abundant and my records are bulky.

On January 10, 1932, Duncan Campbell Scott, president of the Canadian Authors’ Association, descended to his more factual role of president of the Royal Society and wrote from Ottawa with concern for my wolf studies. He sent a press cutting headed “From Our Own Correspondent, Vienna, Sunday”:

“While an express train from Bucharest was snowbound near Zloty and awaiting help, a pack of hungry wolves bore down upon it.

“Having no firearms, the train staff emptied a luggage van and threw into it raw meat from the restaurant car.

“Twenty or more wolves jumped into the van and began to fight one another for the meat. The doors were promptly locked and later the train proceeded on its journey to Kischinev, Bessarabia. On arrival 18 wolves were found alive, the rest having been torn to pieces.”

In view of the style of this despatch I have looked up Karel Capek in _Who’s Who_ and _Britannica_ but cannot determine from the brief sketches whether he was in Vienna during January, 1932.

How wolf stories rotate appeared two years later when C. K. Ogden sent me what is essentially the same tale--though with a new city of origin, a new date line, a few new frills. The cutting is unfortunately from an unnamed paper of London, England--I dare not guess which paper, though I think I recognize the style. It was from Budapest, December 19, 1933. Like the one of two years earlier it was “From Our Own Correspondent.” It ran:

“An unpleasant adventure which overtook the direct train from Bucarest to Budapest is reported from Bucarest.

“During the night the train was held up by snowdrifts and obliged to stand nine hours in an uninhabited part of Roumania. To the terror of the passengers a pack of wolves surrounded the train, and the situation was only saved by the wit of a conductor.

“An order was given that the luggage van should be emptied, and some raw meat from the kitchen was then placed in the van and the doors thrown open. When all the wolves were safely inside the van the doors were shut, and the train continued its journey with these unusual passengers.

At the station of Chrisina, in Roumania, the wolves were transferred to cages which had been prepared for them.”

It is usually difficult to trace stories from the Balkans, perhaps because their Ministers and Consuls there get tired of answering questions about all the strange things we print from their part of the world. For instance, I still covet the real truth on what appeared, as Special Correspondence, in the New York _Times_, February 28, 1932, from Bucharest:

“Two peasants on the way to market in Oradea Mare were attacked on the highroad today by a pack of starving wolves. They were unarmed and, after a brief attempt to beat off the animals with sticks, were pulled down, killed and partly devoured.”

I queried the Roumanian Legation on this but never had a reply.

I have had better luck with the northern countries, perhaps because there I know the ropes. The Director of the University Museum, Philadelphia, wrote March 21 on behalf of himself and one of his vice-presidents, passing on to me heartrending news:

WOLVES KILL GIRL IN FINLAND; INVADE VILLAGES FOR FOOD

Wireless to The New York _Times_.

“HELSINGFORS, March 4.--Villagers in Eastern Finland were terrorized this week by an invasion of hungry wolves, roaming southward from the frozen plains of Lapland.

“The beasts entered villages and even the outlying districts of towns in search of food. The young daughter of a farmer in middle Finland was attacked and killed by wolves while she was walking on a highway near her home. Her parents found only bones and fragments of clothing after the tragedy....”

I wrote Helsingfors, sending a copy of the _Times_ despatch. The Intendent of the Zoological Museum replied March 20th:

“... it is not true that a young daughter of a farmer was attacked and killed. A similar notice was found in our press, so that the telegram to New York is therefore explicable. By an official investigation, the whole thing turned out to be a manifestation of too vivid imagination--somebody had found a bloody rag on the road, and thus the story was immediately given. In the same way it is a real nonsense that the wolves had penetrated into villages and towns. The whole thing was about a couple of animals which killed a number of dogs before they were driven away and killed.”

The cruel ingenuity of man towards wolves is a defensive reaction to the cruel rapacity of wolves toward man. In fact, the wide dissemination of stories about packs is a necessity in justifying the extensiveness of the war we wage and the character of the weapons and tactics we use. We would not be half so successful in protecting the chickens of the farmer and the sheep of the rancher if we did not constantly circulate reports of how wolves will attack anything from a child playing on a cabin floor in Michigan to a regiment of British troops in Siberia.

Some of the methods used against wolves are commonplace, not worth describing, though we might name a few of them--trapping, shooting, the use of poisoned bait, the finding of dens and smoking out of the pups to be clubbed to death. One method is so peculiar that we describe it.

Under date of March 12, 1927, the _Associated Press_ received, but did not issue to the newspapers, information upon the extent and manner of wolf hunting in Poland.

“... for centuries wolf hunts have been carried out by Poles (1) by the aristocrats as a sport, (2) by peasants as a means of livelihood. The same method, which is gentle, as you will see, has been employed by nobility and peasant.

“A live pig is attached by a leather rope at the rear of sleigh or sled in which six or seven men take their places, all heavily armed. The sleigh is drawn by two or three horses. Two men devote themselves exclusively to protecting the horses from the onslaught of the wolves which, led from their lairs by the screams of the suffering and dying hog, rush in a pack after the swiftly moving sleigh. Two other men empty their rifles at wolves from either side and two others do their execution from the rear.

“... (Our informant) said his father has often hunted wolves, which attack in packs, after this fashion.”

I might have traced this account through my aforementioned classmate the Minister to Poland, and would have done so but for chancing upon remarks of Sir Albert Gray before the Royal Geographical Society of London as they are reported in that society’s _Journal_ for June, 1921, p. 445. They are to the effect that people continue holding strange, romantic, beliefs no matter how often these are exposed. He has in mind chiefly the idea that wolves run in packs and quotes the (for the time and place) annihilation of the idea by Baddeley in his _Russia in the Eighties, Sport and Politics_, (London, 1921). I was on the track of wolf-packs then and followed Sir Albert’s clue. I found the author demolishing the pack to his own satisfaction and that he also pays his respects to various beliefs regarding the methods of hunting wolves.

John F. Baddeley spent in Russia, of which a large section of Poland was then a part, most of the decade following 1879 and much of those years in hunting and in the company of sportsmen and naturalists. After denying that wolves ever go in packs and after denying also that wolves are numerous in Russia, he says, beginning on p. 149:

“The idea that wolves are very numerous in Russia has gained substance, also, from the very natural tendency of certain sportsmen to exaggerate their performances; and more especially is this the case in regard to that form of sport in which wolves and sucking-pigs are supposed to play the chief parts. According to published accounts--I have one or two before me but will not pillory the writers--you have only to take a sucking-pig (in good voice) and drive along the highroad in a sledge any winter’s night, trailing behind you a bundle of straw at the end of a string to represent piggy--who meantime must be made to squeal his loudest--to enjoy excellent sport with the numerous wolves that will assuredly come to the lure the first time of asking. Here again I am regretfully forced to say that I never knew a man of proved veracity who claimed to have bagged even one wolf by this method, while one honest friend assured me that he had tried it no less than seventeen times in places where wolves were known to exist, but had only once had a shot at what he thought might be one.”

It may be, as claimed by this author, that wolves do not swarm in from Polish forests at the squeals of a pig, but the belief that they do is useful. Faraway, in Michigan for instance, stories detailing the alleged Polish ingenuities will tend to lead American woodsmen to cleverness of wolf-killing that, in the long run, saves the local farmers a good many chickens and lambs.

A reporter friend tells that the wolf-pack is a standard joke among the foreign correspondents in Europe, certainly in Vienna, and he has passed on to me a crystallization of their attitude, as expressed by the correspondent for a London paper:

The yarn is that the Orient Express was held up by a pack of wolves. They began at the front end, eating the engineer and fireman, and proceeded towards the rear, devouring everyone as they went until, in the last car, they came upon a correspondent whom they spared on his promise that he would give them adequate publicity.

CRUMBS FOR PACK BELIEVERS

The evidence has been, then, that wolf-packs which come up to motion picture and folklore standards do not exist. But there still may be a foundation of reality upon which the imaginative and inventive have built their fabrications.

Students who scout the pack as ordinarily defined and pictured have nevertheless agreed on certain things which, by multiplication, magnification and misinterpretation, could start the pack idea going, or at any rate might keep it going.

Obviously wolf pups will remain with their mother until weaned. Doubtless the family breaks up before the young are quite full grown, or when they are between five and eight months old. There may be as many as twelve in a litter, fourteen by some views. When you meet stories of packs with five to fifteen in them you can thus have a true report of a family hunting, traveling or living together. If the story describes a “gigantic leader of the pack” you may be sure that a family is involved. With the even-sized pups taken for normal wolves, mama looks colossal. If there are two gigantic leaders, then papa must be traveling along.

A foremost authority for America, Nelson, and a foremost one for Eurasia, Buturlin, differ on one point, though only in degree. Nelson is somewhere between thinking it rare and thinking it improbable that last year’s pups will be found still traveling with their mother after this year’s become large enough to hunt; Buturlin thinks it rare but sees no improbability. Accordingly, when Nelson credits a report of say twenty wolves he is inclined to think that two families have come together accidentally for a few moments, or are only following each other accidentally instead of really traveling together. Buturlin feels these are probably one mother’s litters of two years and that they are in semi-permanent company.[15]

With such family groups for nuclei, the traveler’s tale, the peasant’s yarn which the reporter believes, become easy. Just multiply by ten and you have packs of 50, 100, 200. Zero is nothing. So what is a zero more or less in a good yarn?

There are methods other than simple multiplication which can lead reasonably to packs of great size.

In the Arctic and sub-Arctic I have stood at vantage points from which I could see in one, two, or several directions from me scattered wolves which, counted together, would make a “pack.” These are no more really a pack of wolves than the scattered and unconnected pickpockets of a city are a band of thieves. But assume the story is thrice repeated. First version: I saw 100 wolves from one place. Second version: Jones saw 100 wolves in one place. Third version: Brown says Jones saw a pack of 100 wolves.

It might happen that two wolf families scent a caribou or a band. Running up the wind they might so nearly come together, without really joining, that a careless observer seeing the two packs running in the same direction would take them to be one pack--this all the more because groups that are indubitably a mother with pups will sometimes string out half a mile as they lope in pursuit of caribou. But two families strung out, say a mile from the first to the last of them, would not make a pack in the sense of a band working systematically and semi-permanently together.

With considerations such as these in mind, we examine seemingly reliable testimony for considerable numbers of wolves having been observed together.

“Considerable” needs defining. The wolf-killing service of the U. S. Biological Survey were polled by Nelson and voted for two, three, and at highest five wolves being seen together, these always mother or parents with pups. Many have testified for seven in a family, however, among them the zoologist, Dr. R. M. Anderson, Chief Biologist, Ottawa, who has in Canada an official position similar to Nelson’s in the United States. A few apparently good witnesses have testified to nine. We are, then, chiefly concerned in this section with numbers larger than nine and with their interpretation--were they really together and then in what sense? How permanently were they together? Were they family groups?

My voluminous correspondence on packs was, as said, begun in 1922 when I realized that my own belief in wolf-packs, begun in _The Friendly Arctic_ (see that book’s index) was untenable. We have already used that part of the correspondence which attempted to trace packs reported between 1922 and 1936, finding all that could be traced wanting. We now canvass the rest of the evidence, using it in the main chronologically.

_The Encyclopedia Britannica_, Fourteenth Edition, says in its article on wolves that: “Except during summer when the young families of cubs are being separately provided for by their parents they assemble in troops or packs.”

That edition is dated 1929. Seven years before, on March 27, 1922, Anderson wrote to Nelson that during several years spent in Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada and Alaska:

“... I never saw more than seven wolves in any band nor did I hear of any larger bands than seven. A reliable Eskimo in my employ told me that he was once followed by nine wolves on a river near Herschel Island, and in the Joint Report, _Survey International Boundary, 141st Meridian_, 1918, there is a report of nine wolves seen in a band on the boundary.

“In that region the wolves are more often seen in bunches of two or three, or singly, and the bunches of five or more are probably an old female with her cubs of the year. Several that we killed out of such a band at Langton Bay were all immature....

“I have heard occasional vague rumors of larger bands of wolves in more southerly parts of Canada, but have never been able to verify any such reports....”

In passing on to me, November 25, 1922, the information given by Anderson, Nelson added: