Chapter V: Standardized Wolves (3)

“... I am satisfied that the stories of great packs of wolves banded together to pursue caribou or any other game are based on the fertile imagination of the writers and not on observations in the field. It is common knowledge that the wolves pair more or less permanently and are in no sense gregarious animals. At the end of each breeding season and until well into the following winter, my field experience and the information which has come to the Biological Survey from its large force of hunters destroying predatory animals in the western states, coincide in enumerating packs of wolves not exceeding the ordinary normal number of the two parents and the litter of the season which may vary from three or four animals up to ten or twelve. Such bands of parents and their young of the year hunt together until well into the following winter but with the approach of spring they separate to mate.... There is a bare possibility that in pursuing bands of reindeer or caribou, several of these family packs of wolves might accidentally come together in pursuit but such union would be purely fortuitous and of very temporary endurance.

“My observations and personal information obtained at first hand extends from the mountains bordering the valley of Mexico, north to the Arctic circle in Alaska and also the observations of our large corps of hunters numbering several hundred men, who, during the progress of their campaign against predatory animals in the western states have killed between four and five thousand of these animals within the last six years.”

Nelson wrote me January 4, 1923, after a fresh study of some Russian evidence, that clearly they have there the same situation as we have here, “the wolves running in family parties exactly as they do in North America, running in great bands only in literature and folklore.”

On January 18 Harkin sent me a long quotation from a story he had found in “one of our local papers, under date the 17th instant.” It is a long statement, generally claiming that wolves are not dangerous. A section bearing on our present theme is under the subhead “Whole Pack Fled.” In northern Ontario the sledge was crossing a lake, on a winter evening, toward an island:

“We were just making the point of this island, and what should we meet coming from the other side but a pack of wolves. We just met there. The leader, a big, grizzled, long-legged old chap, looked me over from a distance of about twenty feet; the rest of the pack ranged behind and alongside of him, their tails straight out for just about as long as it takes to stiffen them out with fear. Then they broke. They just flattened out on the ice and flew--twenty-one of them.”

We have used in another connection parts of a letter from Inspector Jennings of the R.C.M.P., Edmonton, April 20, 1923, one of the most informative of the whole wolf correspondence:

“... it appears timber wolves are becoming more numerous in the McKenzie Delta, but do not appear to be running in packs. At Baillie Island where a number were killed in the winter of 1921-22 they appear to be running in packs of from four to seven. We have also paid bounties at Tree River Detachment for wolves killed in the Coronation Gulf. C. Klinkenberg, whom you remember, told me in 1921, when I was North, of a fight he had with a she wolf and five yearling pups. He was attacked by all of them, and only by the fortunate appearance of his son with his rifle was his life saved.... The general impression is that such bands, or what may be called a band, is generally a family, and that it is only occasionally, when hunting for food, that two or more families might come together and constitute a real pack.

“In regard to the McKenzie District, an old prospector who has travelled from the headwaters of the Thelon River to the British Columbia boundary in the West states that while east of the McKenzie River wolves may be plentiful when Caribou are numerous, he has never seen them in what may be called a pack, although at times in the open several wolves may be seen together, but evidently working independently. Below Simpson and also on the Liard River in the Foot Hills, he has seen as many as twenty under one leader, but generally the pack is from five to nine. The band of twenty was following a moose track. At another time he states that when his party had killed a moose, shortly after, a large grey wolf was seen on the opposite side of the river. This wolf called a few times and was soon joined by others to the number of ten....

“One of my officers in February, 1916, while traveling on the McKenzie, about 30 miles below Simpson, came upon a band of seven, at a place where a moose had been killed the previous day.”

December 19, 1924, Nelson reaffirmed his lack of evidence for believing that two or more families ever made up a “temporary pack.” He also defined the terms under which, for sake of argument, he might concede theoretically, in the absence of evidence, that unions might take place.

“I am still skeptical about the formation of wolf-packs which are made up of two or more families hunting in companionship. I have no knowledge of any such combination, and knowing the habits and characteristics of wolves doubt this occurring except under what might be termed fortuitous circumstances. Two or more family parties of wolves might incidentally come together in the pursuit of the same game animal and join in the kill; but if they did so I should expect a fierce battle to ensue between the different parties of wolves, strangers to one another, just as would happen in the case of strange dogs. Furthermore, I believe that should two or more family parties of wolves thus come together in the immediate pursuit of game, they would promptly spread into their original units as soon as the kill was made or the chase ended. Wolves have much the same nature as dogs, and the hostility that strange dogs show one to another is a good indication of what might be expected on the part of wolves....”

C. Hart Merriam wrote January 12, 1925, quoting his own _Mammals of the Adirondacks_ (New York, 1882):

“Comparatively few wolves are now to be found in the Adirondacks, though twelve years ago they were quite abundant, and used to hunt in packs of half a dozen or more.... The amount of noise that a single wolf is capable of producing is simply astonishing, and many amusing episodes of camp lore owe their origin to this fact. More than one ‘lone traveler’ has hastily taken to a tree, and remained in the inhospitable shelter of its scrawny branches for an entire night, believing himself surrounded by a pack of at least fifty fierce and hungry wolves, when, in reality, there was but one, and (as its tracks afterwards proved) it was on the farther side of a lake, a couple of miles away.”

Merriam further quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_ (New York, 1885):

“According to my experience, the wolf is rather solitary. A single one or a pair will be found by themselves, or possibly with one or more well-grown young ones, and will then hunt over a large tract where no other wolves will be found; and as they wander very far, and as their melancholy howlings have a most ventriloquial effect, they are often thought to be much more plentiful than they are.”

In its care to avoid nature faking the _Associated Press_ refused to circulate a story which they received from Winnipeg and which Jackson S. Elliott, Assistant General Manager, sent along for my wolf files July 8, 1926. That account, however, runs well within family limits and so has the probabilities for it. The applicable section runs that “the hunter noticed a string of seven grey wolves crossing the prairie. He waited until they approached and was successful in bringing down five of them.”

The story seemed probably correct and gave a lead to further information, so I wrote A. Brabant, Fur Trade Commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Winnipeg, and received through him a valuable letter from their A. C. Clark, Norway House, Manitoba, August 3:

“Carl Sherman, the trapper who killed the wolves referred to, is at present in this locality, and I have been able to get the details of the story referred to.

“Sherman is trapping on the Hayes River, about 150 miles north of Oxford House Post. He was travelling north one day early in November ... and saw about 14 or 15 wolves making for the point on which he stood. When they got to within 75 yards of him, he fired and brought down the leader. By the time they got out of sight, he had killed five.... They were all full grown, and all males. The wolves were not dangerous, but made for safety, as soon as they got over the surprise of the first shot. The wind was in the wrong direction for the wolves to get the scent of Sherman.

“I can vouch for the above story being correct....”

This, then, is a remarkable story. The reader will find several things in which it contradicts, or seems to contradict, Nelson, Buturlin, and Anderson in so far as he was quoted (above) by Nelson. It fits badly with the rest of our evidence but is nevertheless impressively vouched for.

Information similarly difficult came in an undated letter July, 1927, from Fred B. Kniffen of the Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley:

“... I have seen two wolf-packs.

“I had occasion to spend the winter of 1923-24 prospecting in the upper Tanana region of Alaska. I hunted considerably as caribou meat furnished an appreciable part of my diet and almost all of that of my dogs. One afternoon I was seated on a little hill about a quarter of a mile from a small lake. Through the natural pass below me the caribou had been passing at the rate of several hundred a day. As I watched, a file of wolves emerged from some brush on the opposite side of the lake, skirted the shore and went off in the direction the caribou were going. They seemed to be running roughly in a column of twos and I counted about twenty-eight in the pack.

“One night I was awakened by the howls of my dogs responding to those of some wolves. I stood in the doorway of my cabin and a little later could distinguish the forms of five wolves against the snow of the river, perhaps seventy-five yards away. The dogs were now growling, apparently in fear. One shot dispersed the wolves....

“These events all occurred in late winter. It is quite possible that an old she wolf and her pups may have accounted for a large part of this but the large pack could hardly be explained away in this fashion.”

Kniffen himself suggests a family explanation for his second pack. On July 14 I suggested in a letter to him that _possibly_ the first set were not a pack, either,--in the sense of having banded together for cooperative hunting. I said that: “The wolves you saw following each other, though there were twenty-eight, were (then) no more necessarily a pack than eleven college men walking towards an athletic field are necessarily the college team.”

The well-known and highly-regarded student of Canadian wild life, Tony Lascelles, wrote for the Winnipeg _Free Press_ of April 25, 1936, an article, “The Mammals of Manitoba.” A paragraph in it can be read as supporting the traditional wolf-pack--I did not so read it but thought others might. But Lascelles writes from Mistamick Lodge, Dauphin, Manitoba, May 15, 1936, with reference to his use of the key word, that “the pack is a family group and the maximum pack is a maximum family.”

With this we close the section of our discussion which is written for those who like to believe that even the seemingly most absurd folklore tale has developed from a nucleus of fact.

WOLVES AND BABES

The misanthropy of wolves, dramatic in their pursuit of wedding parties and in the siege of stalled trains, is particularly horrible toward little children. They eat them all up, rather jocularly in Red Riding Hood, grimly in our newspapers. See, for instance, the tragic story “Copyright, 1928, by the New York Times Company. By Wireless to The New York _Times_:

“RIGA, Jan. 1.--A woman of the Unciany district of Lithuania, riding with a child in a one-horse sleigh and pursued by a pack of wolves, made a desperate effort to escape, but after a short, sharp race the horse collapsed.

“The wolves tore the child from its mother’s arms, devoured it, and then fell on the mother. Some peasants, hearing her cries, hurried to the scene and rescued her, torn but still alive.

“As a result of the severe weather the depredations by wolves in many parts of Russia are unusually alarming. The Soviet authorities are carrying out an organized campaign against the danger by offering rewards for wolves’ heads. In some districts detachments of the Red Army are used.

“Packs of wolves have appeared in many parts usually immune, especially in the Crimea.”

Reporters naturally have time for cabling such stories but ministers at Washington and consuls-general in New York, though frequently kind and helpful, are at times so buried in humdrum that you cannot get them interested. I failed in tracing this despatch from Riga. Therefore we can but deal in likelihoods and refer to the Michigan story of February 3, 1927, reported _ante_--it was nearer home and so we were able to enlist the help of local investigators.

We are reluctant to pursue further this gruesome child-eating. The case against the wolf in this respect is indeed black enough, what with the inclusion of many babes among the people devoured already in this chapter by the ravenous hordes. We turn with relief to a brighter side of the case. In warm contrast are the maternally kind and otherwise friendly wolves that have nursed and cared for children, sometimes even twins, as in the case of Romulus and Remus. In our present century there is never a decade, there is seldom a year, when newspapers do not bring us well-attested cases.

Through the _Associated Press_ the New York _Times_ reported October 22, 1926 (from London, October 21):

“Two little ‘wolf girls’ were found recently living in a wolf’s den near an isolated village in Bengal, British India. The story is told by _The Westminster Gazette_, which received it from India, vouched for by the Rev. Jal Singh of Midnapur, Bengal, and Bishop Pakenham Walsh of Bishops College, Calcutta.

“Bishop Walsh relates that about the end of August, while visiting the Rev. Jal Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur, Mr. Singh recounted how he discovered the ‘wolf girls.’

“In a distant part of his district not long before, the villagers pointed out to him a path they avoided because it was haunted by demons. Investigation revealed a wolf den in which there were several wolf cubs and two girls, about two and eight years of age, both exceedingly fierce, running on all fours, uttering guttural barks and living like wolves.

“The supposition was that they were abandoned as babies by their mother or mothers and were found and adopted by the she wolf. With much difficulty, the children were rescued, but the younger died soon afterward.

“The elder child survived and is now at the orphanage. She was gradually weaned from her savage ways, but she fought fiercely against wearing clothes, and tore them off even after they were sewn on her. For a time she refused to be washed and ate with her mouth in a dish. Eventually she was taught to use her hands and say a few words.

“She still is weak mentally and neither cries nor laughs, but is gentle with animals, preferring the company of dogs to children.”

Sir Sidney Harmer, British student of wolves, wrote November 15, 1926, that the _Westminster Gazette_ had told him they knew the bishop of the story existed and believed the wolf children also were real. Sir Sidney closed:

“I have myself no information on the subject, and I do not know of anyone else who could help you. We are inclined to be a little sceptical.”

I never did get farther with the investigation of this particular case.

Reports that were traced, though not by me, appeared several times the next year. The first, “Copyright, 1927, by The New York Times Company--Special Cable to the New York _Times_, Allahabad, British India, April 5,” said that:

“Herdsmen near Miawana, seventy-five miles from here, found a small Indian boy supposed to be about 10 years of age, in a wolf’s den. From marks in the den it was obvious that the boy had been living there. He was unable to talk or to walk properly, but went on all fours, lapped water and ate grass.

“The boy was brought here, put in a special lockup and supplied with food and medicine. At night he barked, bit himself and other people and had to be tied down. He is very thin and emaciated, but his limbs are otherwise well formed. He has a terrible scar on one side of his face, as if he had been mauled by some animal.

“He has been taken to Bareilly for treatment at a mental hospital.”

The _Times_ furnished a supplementary note:

“This is the third case of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ hero, Mowgli, in real life which has been discovered in India within the last ten months. Last September Bishop Walsh wrote to the Indian _Social Reformer_ of Bombay of the case of two little girls who had been found by the Rev. J. Singh in a wolf’s den near Bengal. They revealed the same characteristics as the boy described in the Allahabad dispatch. One of them soon pined away and died, but the other rapidly became ‘humanized’ in Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur. It was supposed that the girls, as is sometimes the case in India, had been abandoned in the jungle by their parents on account of their sex and had been mothered by a she wolf which had just been deprived of her young.

“The same explanation would not account for the presence of the boy in a wolf’s den near Miawana.”

Further news, similarly special and copyrighted, came by wireless from London and was published April 27:

“Further information is now available about the so-called ‘wolf-child’ whose discovery near Miawana, British India, seventy-five miles from Allahabad, provoked so much discussion. Some travelers tell of similar discoveries extending back many years, but medical authorities are inclined to dismiss them as fables.

“The boy found in Miawana is judged to be between 7 and 12 years old and in general appearance is said to be little different from an ordinary child, but in his actions betrays signs that are declared to point to his bringing up with wolves. He can stand up and walk, but sometimes prefers to crawl, sitting on his haunches with legs curled up and propelling himself forward with the palms of hands....

“He is said to display certain instincts even lower than those of his alleged foster parents....”

On July 10, a long, undated communication marked “London,” said that:

“News of the discovery of another alleged wolf-child in India has started a brisk controversy here over the authenticity of such children. No previous wolf-child has occasioned so much stir in scientific quarters as has the boy discovered by Indian herdsmen a few weeks ago in a wolves’ cave near Miawana, seventy-five miles from Allahabad.

“Some of the best known medical men in London have called the story incredible. Old Indian army officers have replied by asserting that they have actually seen wolf-children....”

whereupon the _Times_ devotes more than a column to a statement generally in support of the India despatches. Among those in favor is:

“Rudyard Kipling, whose Mowgli of the ‘Jungle Book’ is the best known wolf-child in fiction, has for once withdrawn his veto on newspaper interviews, and is quoted as saying that wolf-children ‘are by no means impossible.’ The author goes on to say:

“‘There have been other instances of them. They say that the Miawana boy crawls on the hands and knees: I think it much more likely that it would be the knees and elbows. That was the way of the other children who, like Mowgli, were adopted by wolves and knew all the mysteries of the jungle. That way leaves their hands free to seize their prey and to defend themselves.’”

This long article, dealing with many cases of wolf-children, says that:

“... the one commonly known as the Secundra wolf-boy, is the best authenticated case within the memory of living man. This boy was captured in 1867 by a shooting expedition in the unfrequented jungles of Bulandshahr. The hunters surprised a stray wolf, which they followed to a small mound of earth with a flat-topped rock sticking out of the mound. A small, strange-looking animal was asleep in the sun on the rock. To the amazement of the hunting party, it proved to be a boy, who leaped from the rock as soon as he saw the hunters and, running on all fours, disappeared into a cave along with the startled wolf.

“The hunters were either unable or afraid to go further; but, feeling that something ought to be done, they returned to Bulandshahr and consulted the Magistrate. They were advised to go back to the cave and smoke out the wolf and its weird companion. This they did. The wolf was shot as soon as it rushed out and its companion was pounced upon and captured after a severe struggle, during which several members of the party were bitten. Two wolf cubs were also killed and the party returned to the Magistrate to claim a reward for the dead wolf and the dead cubs, and to exhibit the human being they had captured.

“The wolf bounty was paid and the wolf-boy was sent to the Secundra Orphanage. He was thought to be about 7 or 8 years old. For a long time he tore off the clothes that were supplied him and persisted in eating his food from the ground. As the years went by he became more docile and eventually was baptized, taking the name of Sanicher, which is Hindustani for Saturday, the day on which he was captured. His head was small, his forehead low and narrow; his eyes were large and gray and restless. He squinted incessantly and when walking lifted his feet high like a man walking through wet grass, his entire body moving in a series of jerks as he stepped along.”

Interest, sympathy, resentment were among the feelings commonly expressed by those who wrote “Letters to the Editor” during the outstanding wolf-child year of 1927. An undated cutting from the New York _Times_, probably around July 15 or 20, has a letter from Jacqueline Nollet:

“Have men for ‘humanity’s sake’ the right to take this Miawana boy away from his mother-wolf and from his brotherly playmates, from the jungle’s new and enthralling life, and to condemn him instead to an existence devoid of companionship and a life of utter misery...?

“Since the wolf-man is no longer free to pursue his own mode of living and is considered as a near-animal, could not the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals interfere and have a law voted to the effect that a child saved from starvation, loved and protected by the wolves against ferocious beasts, might be left to live with his wolf family? And if the boy must be taken away from the wild, could not man take a lesson and be as merciful as a wolf and spare the life of the foster-mother and her cubs?

“Let us hope never to see repeated the act of the magistrate of Bulandshahr who planned and rewarded the murder of the wolf family of the Sanicher boy....”

The scientists were more hard-boiled. For instance, Herman B. Sheffield, M.D., of New York City, wrote July 10, evidently fresh from reading the long historical summary in the _Times_ of that date:

“Judging by the article on the ‘New Wolf Child Found in India,’ I surmise that there are still a large number of civilized people, including scientists, who seriously believe that ‘wolf-children’ exist in reality instead of in fiction. As a matter of fact, such ‘wolf-children’ are frequently met in daily practice and are nothing but microcephalic idiots.

“These children are born with small, often dome-shaped, heads in consequence of undeveloped, small brains. Owing to their extreme restlessness and awkward power of locomotion, their habit to hop from place to place often resembles that of a rabbit, goat or monkey.”

As the _Times_ reported, there was keen interest in London. The Over-Seas League was naturally concerned and published in their journal _Over Seas_ a statement by “A Member” which says that:

“Valentine Ball (previously quoted) mentions that he asked an eminent surgeon of his day what he thought of all these stories, and the reply was, ‘I don’t believe any of them.’ The medical profession of to-day seems to share this lack of conviction....

“No one, apparently, has ever found a child living in an animal’s lair and left it there, returning from time to time to observe how it was progressing and to find out how it was fed. There is no trustworthy evidence to show that the children so far reported as wolf-children have ever survived for more than a few hours or days away from human care before they were discovered and restored to such care. There is no recorded case which could not be explained on the theory that the child had wandered from home or been abandoned within a day or two of its being rescued, and it is a well-known fact that Indian mothers will sometimes ‘lose’ in the jungle mentally defective children, which goes far to account for the imbecility of all so-called wolf-children....

“All the stories of alleged wolf-children rest on native evidence, and native evidence is by no means always to be relied upon as faithful records of fact. The world of reality has its limits. The world of imagination, especially of Eastern imagination, is boundless.”

Somewhere in the reports on most children nurtured by wolves there is comment that, even after they had been taught by their human captors to eat meat, they continued fond of roots, and even of grass. Is it possible, then, that the wolves which bring up children are of a kindlier disposition than ordinary wolves for the reason that they are vegetarians?

WOLVES FOR POSTERITY

As said at the beginning of this chapter on wolves, we write for every shade of belief. This last section is for a group first in our thoughts, because largest--the lovers of romance, the enemies of the cant of science, the vast multitude of free believers in the freedom to believe.

True, the attacks on the wolf-pack are numerous. But what do they amount to? They are not campaigns by great armies, they are at most guerrilla warfare. More accurately, they are sniping.

For example, the chief of a biological survey writes letters to a friend of his, poohpoohing wolf-pack stories, and the friend perhaps shows them around a bit. Not half of the few who see the letters will be affected--everybody knows what scientists are, a self-elected Brain Trust dictating to all of us as to what we may and may not believe. If the letter is shown in any place like a smoking room, it is talked down by several who know people who know other people who have been treed, pursued, or at the very least scared half to death by immense packs of wolves.

Or a pack story in the newspapers gets a large head on the front page; the denial comes a week later in small type on an inside page where no one reads it. Again the pack triumphs.

The disgruntled may have for a time the active support of a news-gathering organization, as above mentioned for the _Associated Press_, but the most they can do is to caution their own direct employees to be careful. They may not dictate to their affiliates, as, for instance, the _Associated Press_ trying to dictate to the _Canadian Press_ or to _Reuter’s_. Besides, they could not hold their own as purveyors of readable news if they left to rivals the wolf-children of India, the sieges of trains by wolf-packs in the Balkans, or that increase of wolves in the U.S.S.R. which (everybody at that time agreed) resulted from the substitution of communism for capitalism.

You may manage, perhaps, to get printed a diatribe against packs in a highbrow journal, as I once did in the _American Mercury_. But you cannot make new disbelievers in wolf-packs by addressing the readers of such a magazine, for the badge of their sophistication is that they are disbelievers already in whatever the rest of the world believes. If you ever made nearly everybody sceptical on wolf-packs the _Mercury_ clientele would start believing in them--which is, of course, a digression.

We shall close this chapter with a triumphant, because sufficient, proof that wolf-packs are a reality. To accomplish this we use the democratic method, adjudication by majority vote.

We shall have support for wolf-packs from that most popular appeal to the people, our greatest of weeklies, the _Saturday Evening Post_, with its millions of sold copies and no doubt several readers per copy. We shall have on our side, too, the most orthodox and the broadest appeal to the scientists, which is through the American Association for the Advancement of Science and through their kind of affiliate _Science Service_. They do not have so large a membership as that of the _Post_, but it is effective since it overlaps but slightly the circle of the _Post’s_ readers. The members of the Association include most professors and other teachers of science in our various schools and colleges, most scientists in the employ of commercial companies (at least those in the higher brackets), and most of those employed by the national, state, and other governments. Their official journal, _Science_, goes to every library of consequence in the United States, and widely through other countries. _Science_ is read for excerpts and for ideas on behalf of newspapers and magazines. Then a great many of the papers subscribe to _Science Service_, and even use it.

If we can show that the _Post_ and _Science_ (including _Science Service_) are on the side of the wolf-pack, we have it winning hands down.

On January 9, 1932, C. B. Ruggles had in the _Post_ an article, “Neighboring With Wolves.” We are told, or given to understand, in this and other of his _Post_ contributions, that Ruggles yields to few in the extensiveness and intensiveness of his northern lore. He has not merely been in Alaska; he has actually lived there. He must have been way up north, for he tells about the sun that “it would, for one hour and fifteen minutes, skirt the earth’s rim before sinking below the horizon for another twenty-odd hours of opaque-lidded slumber.” We have been told a little earlier about a Light of Delusion--“The Eskimos call this kind of light Woosha Kua”--which plays strange tricks with your eyesight. Still, apparently, it was not, in the Ruggles judgment, due to the Woosha Kua that he saw wolves pursuing caribou in great detail and that “There were twenty-seven wolves in the pack.”

About this time I happened to give a talk before a small group at the University Museum, Philadelphia. I must have said something about wolf-packs and the Director, Dr. Horace H. F. Jayne, must have given my address to Max C. Goodman, of 3143 West Diamond Street, Philadelphia, who in turn must have written to C. B. Ruggles, at Freedom, Oklahoma, telling that Ruggles and I seemed in disagreement on wolf-packs. These things are inference, for there is a gap in my records. I have, however, a copy of a letter from Ruggles, dated January 19, 1932, sent me by Goodman, which runs in part:

“Nature causes wolves to gather in monstrous packs in all parts of the wilderness the last part of December or the first part of January. Eskimos call these large wolf-gatherings, ‘KA-MA-CHUA’ (Mate choosing season) for this is about four or five weeks prior to wolf mating time and the Eskimos as well as the Northern trapper believe nature has brought these gatherings about for the young and unmated wolves to choose their mates, believed for life.

“I am writing you the above for the sole purpose of you taking it up with the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find. If you should find that Mr. V. Steffenson’s statement is false, kindly investigate other positive statements that he has made regarding the Arctic....

“I hope to hear from you again and in regard to the results of your investigation of my statement as well as the investigation of the statement of V. Steffenson.”

Goodman was to submit the Ruggles statement and mine about wolves to “the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find.” So I wrote Goodman on January 25 a letter in about 90 per cent disagreement with Ruggles and taking substantially that position contrary to his which is stated in the first section of the present chapter. Goodman submitted this letter and the Ruggles one, which we quoted just above, to the often-mentioned Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey, Dr. E. W. Nelson. Nelson wrote Goodman from the Hotel Johnson, Visalia, California, February 10. Again we quote in part:

“Your letter came to me just as I was preparing to leave Washington for California--hence, the delay in my reply.

“I have been interested by the letters from Ruggles and Stefansson and am in complete accord with the statements in Stefansson’s letter. Mr. Ruggles appears to be imbued with the old folklore idea about huge packs of wolves roaming wild regions of the North.

“In common with most people, as a young man, I had the same ideas derived from the commonly published misstatements on the subject. Then for more than twenty years as a field naturalist, much of the time in wolf country and later for more than that length of time administrating the field work of other naturalists and hunters in wolf country, I came to a definite knowledge that the typical wolf-pack consists of the two old wolves and their young of the previous spring. These ‘packs’ may number from three to more than a dozen animals, according to the number of survivors of the litter of young. Sometimes a wolf may have a dozen young. There is no doubt that, by chance, two or perhaps more litters might come together, but such association would be extremely brief. I have never known or had definite information of such an instance and it is given as a mere possibility.

“For many years, the Biological Survey in Washington investigated every published account of devastations and of the killing of people by wolf-packs in the United States and Canada by writing to the postmaster or others living near the scene of the alleged work of wolf-packs and without a single exception, they proved to be purely imaginary.

“Under my direction, one of the best field naturalists in the Government Service spent more than a year in the Tanana River country of Alaska in the very district where Alaska papers published accounts of great wolf-packs destroying caribou and although he traversed that country in various directions in winter, he saw only occasional wolf tracks in the snow and never a sign of the alleged packs....

“My information is from my own observations and from hundreds of other reliable men in the field in wolf country.”

Once more there is, superficially, a defeat of the wolf-pack. Really the pack won, for the _Post_ is read by several million people of the type who believe what they see in that sort of publication, while the quadrangular Goodman-Nelson-Ruggles-Stefansson correspondence could have had an effect upon only one of the four. Ruggles knew already there were packs, so we could not convince him there weren’t. Nelson and I knew there weren’t any, so Ruggles could not convince us there were. Goodman remained the only one who may have been affected, and he may have swung either way. I believe Dr. Jayne saw the correspondence, but from his record I think he was likely enough prejudiced already against the pack. Perhaps a dozen or two of Goodman’s friends saw the correspondence, and perhaps some of them were influenced. If so, they may have gone in either direction. Therefore, the balloting, _Post_ readers against some of the letter readers, must have gone something like a million to one in favor of the pack.

The authenticity of the wolf-pack might have been secure for years on the strength of just the one Ruggles article in the _Saturday Evening Post_. But they have carried more articles by Ruggles, and may have carried further eyewitness testimony. Then certainly there are many journals, only a little down from the _Post_ in their sway of the public mind which have borne witness. Packs are going strong in the movies and, as shown heretofore, they appear frequently in the daily press. The general verdict is, therefore, clear.

But we said above that we would range scientists with the true believers. This we do by referring to the previously described journal _Science_, from which we quote in part an item that appeared in the issue of February 28, 1936:

“Wolf fighters, skilled in warfare against these voracious pack-hunting beasts, are asked for in an emergency wire from Governor John W. Troy, of Alaska, recently received at the Department of the Interior.... Vicious gangs of wolves have been raiding the reindeer herds owned by natives of northern Alaska.... Native hunters have proved unable to cope with the animals, but it is believed that about four hunter leaders, each with a few assistants, could in a swift campaign break up the marauding bands.”

Thus we have the official journal of a foremost scientific body vouching for wolves as pack-hunters, as being in gangs and in bands.

But a testimony from Canada is in a way more striking than any can be from the United States, for wolves are by common consent more numerous and widespread there. As in the United States, the Canadian Government takes special cognizance of them, for they prey on flock and fowl. There is, then, _Bulletin No. 13, New Series_, Dominion of Canada, Department of Agriculture, “The Habits and Economic Importance of Wolves in Canada,” by Norman Criddle. On p. 6 we read:

“Parent wolves live in pairs during the summer months, but as the young develop they form with them small bands, which meeting with other families in their wanderings, acquire the proportions of packs. These packs break up again in February....”

We close our case by repeating and insisting that attacks on wolf-packs are not serious--they are no more than sporadic sniping.

The _Saturday Evening Post_, _Science Service_, and the Department of Agriculture of the Dominion of Canada, powerful and worthy of all respect and confidence, are in this relation spokesmen too for a popular and a scientific multitude. The wolf-pack, then, is secure even as things stand. But conditions are bound to trend steadily in their favor. As living beasts, wolves are getting fewer with the colonization of the wilderness, but wolf-pack stories do not thereby get fewer--witness how they come again and again from districts where wolves no longer exist. The fewer the living wolves the less the chance of their being so studied that evidence against the pack habit can be gathered. Finally there will be no wolves left, except in zoos. The belief in packs will have survived the means of refuting it. It will have become a truth.