I quote these accounts as the two most interesting, and, for their evidential value, refer again to the work I have just mentioned. Then was the famous story of Romulus and Remus true after all? Supposing the brothers had been found and rescued by peasants, before they had been long with the wolf, this does not seem to me impossible, for then there would not have been time for those dreadful dehumanising effects, recorded in these Indian cases. But whether true or not, I have no doubt that the legend—and it is only one of many such—grew out of observed facts, and such facts were, no doubt, commoner in early times than they are now. As a reason for the child being sometimes suckled, after having been brought by one of a pair of wolves to the common den, Professor Ball suggests that if the other of them had, in the meantime, brought home something else—as, say, a kid or goat—and if this had been eaten first, the child, lying amongst the cubs, might have been received as one of them, before a fresh meal was required, in which case it would not afterwards have been hurt. He thinks it more likely, however, that the child should have been stolen by a she-wolf, to replace the loss of one or other of her cubs. I do not, myself, however, think this nearly so likely. Why should it occur to a wolf, or any animal, to replace its own young by a human child? If it wished to adopt, it would surely adopt a wolf-cub. The first of these explanations, therefore, is the one that I accept, and it seems to me a probable enough one. Children in Oude used to be so frequently carried off, that there were people who made a livelihood by searching the wolf-dens, on the chance of finding gold ornaments there, for in India it is customary to deck children out in jewellery, of which even the poorest people seem to have a family stock. No wonder, therefore, if sometimes one should have escaped being devoured in the way above indicated; but whether the same state of things prevails at the present time I do not know. Perhaps it does, for the people who went about looking for the jewels, did not want the wolves to be exterminated, for fear they should not be able to make an honest living, just as our own wreckers were very much opposed to the building of lighthouses, or as some shipowners think it a wicked thing that they should not be able to insure their vessels for four or five times their value. Whether they still can do this, or whether there are still professional wolf-den searchers in India, I don’t quite know.