We have considered all the most important “beasts of prey,” with two exceptions, under the Cat family, to which they belong. Two important ravagers still remain--the Bear, of which we shall speak by-and-bye, and the Wolf, whose turn has now come. Of the great Cats, much good is often spoken. Notwithstanding their cruelty and bloodthirstiness, they are handsome, strong, and usually courageous: each one hunts his prey for himself, and when he has satisfied his appetite, leaves the remainder to inferior beasts, disdaining, unless when reduced by starvation, to touch any but fresh meat. The Bear, too, often has a word said for him: his curious, half-good-natured look, his semi-human waddle, the tricks he is capable of learning, all combine to make him seem not so very objectionable a beast after all. But who ever heard any good said of a Wolf? There have, indeed, been a few instances of Wolves in captivity who have shown much affection and fidelity to their masters; but, under ordinary circumstances, cruel, cowardly, dastardly, greedy, pitiless, are the adjectives applied to him. The Wolf has a place in history as venerable as that of the Lion, and he was the dread of the shepherd four thousand years ago. A very old Sheep-master, addressing his sons on his death-bed--these sons being, eleven out of twelve of them, shepherds--said of the youngest:--“Benjamin shall ravin as a Wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.” Homer also, in his immortal “Iliad,” frequently brings in the Wolf, giving with a few master-touches a vivid picture of the hated brute’s habits:-- “Sudden as hungry Wolves the Kids purloin, Or Lambs, which haply some unheeding swain Hath left to roam at large the mountains wild; They, seeing, snatch them from beside the dams, And rend incontinent the feeble prey.” ----“As Wolves that gorge The prey yet panting, terrible in force, When on the mountains wild they have devour’d An antler’d Stag new-slain, with bloody jaws Troop all at once to some clear fountain, there To lap with slender tongues the brimming wave; No fears have they, but at their ease eject From full maws flatulent the clotted gore.” The ancient Greeks and Romans had a very curious superstition about the Wolf. They believed that if a man and a Wolf met, and the beast saw his human enemy before the latter caught sight of him, the man became dumb. Hence the Greek proverb, λύκον ἰδεῖν, “to see a Wolf,” that is, to be struck dumb. Virgil expresses the same notion in his “Bucolics”-- “Nunc oblita mihi tot carmina: vox quoque Mœrim Jam fugit ipsa: lupi Mœrim videre priores.”[123]