THE CUNNING OF CRIMINAL ANIMALS.*
A WELL-WRITTEN and well-illustrated book with a colour lees title often fails to attract readers, especially if, in the present case, it is published in America, and deal with matters more familiar to that public than to ours Mr. E. Seton Thompson, Naturalist to the Government o. Manitoba, under the title of Wild Animals I have Known, ha: written a series of chapters on the cunning of animals. Thej bear evidence of very close observation and familiarity witt the ways of some of these North American beasts ; and thougi he has woven together the adventures of more than on creature in the same "personality," he gives his word that it the most remarkable stories there is "almost no deviation from fact." It is doubtful if the book gains in interest from the form in which the stories are presented ; but apparently the example of the Jungle Boole has been too strong, aid he endeavours to give the facts in somewhat similar fora. But either in the preface or in the text he is at pains distinguish the salient facts from the setting, and it is to passages so guaranteed that we refer in this article.
Though cunning is a device of the weak, the weakness it indicates, even among animals, is entirely relative. We find three spheres of animal cunning, of very different quality. There is the cunning of the wolves and pumas, which use their wits to rob man of his flocks and cattle ; the cunning of the domesticated creatures, which finds its development criminal animals, and its worst example among the do which lead double lives, guarding their own flocks by day an killing others by night; and the cunning of self-preservatio of the creatures on which others prey. The example give of the latter is the cottontail rabbit, a solitary species, no social like our rabbits, and a much cleverer creatur This is evidently the Brer Rabbit of "Uncle Remus," an the chapter on his thoughtful ways explains why he is select as the Achitophel who gets the better of all the other era tures. The author claims for certain animals a shar of the deference paid to depraved greatness, — the bobtailed wolf which terrorised the whole city of Par' for ten years at the beginning of the fourteenth eee tury; the Soehnee panther which in less than two yea killed nearly three hundred human beings ; and two crea Lures of North American fame, a lame grizzly bear, whic: in two years ruined all the hog-raisers and drove h the farmers out of business in the Sacramento Valle and a certain wolf of New Mexico, which (with its band was reported to have killed a cow every day for fiv years. He visited the ranche which this creature infested and witnessed the astonishing cunning it exhibited. T ranche was well watered and wooded in North Ne Mexico, giving good cover to the wolves, which, from th abundance of food afforded by the cattle, refused to look any animal which they had not killed themselves, and wh a "kill" was poisoned would not touch it. Their prey mainly young cows and calves, and though in one night t. of the pack killed two hundred and fifty sheep, they di not eat any of the mutton. The band were led by a large grey wolf, whose track was well known, being across while other wolves' footmarks were only 41 in. Th'' always ran from human beings, but were frequently se. The big wolf was so well known that an increasing Pi was set on his scalp till it reached 1,000 dollars, ac the story of the campaign opens with the attempt 01 professional hunter with a pack of dogs to run wolves and "hold them up" till they could be shot. .1. wolves separated, so did the dogs, several were kill and the hunter went back to Texas. Poison and tra were then tried, but the wolves avoided both, and t
• Wild Animal, I have Known. By E. Beton Thompson. New York C. Charles Scribner.
big wolf and his mate brought up a litter of cubs in some rocky precipices within a thousand yards of one of the farms, killing cattle every day. The author does not mention that the dog-wolf regularly feeds the cubs as soon as they are weaned, and is a good father of a family, a fact which makes this incident more than probable. It was at this period that Mr. Thompson made the acquaintance of the big wolf, and tried to kill him by scientific methods. He melted cheese in the fat of a heifer, in a china dish, cut it into lumps with a bone knife to avoid the taint of metal, and put into these strychnine and cyanide in odour-proof capsules. He wore gloves steeped in cow's blood, and even avoided breathing on the baits. He found that one of these had been picked up, followed the track to the next, which was also gone, as was the third. At the fourth he found that the wolf had laid all four together, and scattered dirt over them! The wolves then took to stampeding and killing sheep. Half a dozen goats were usually kept with each flock as leaders. Goats are not easily stampeded at night, and the sheep, when wolves were about, would crowd round the goats, and keep quiet while the shepherds drove off the wolves. The object of the latter is to stampede the sheep and pick them up day by day afterwards. One night they ran over the backs of the huddled sheep, and killed all the goats in a few minutes. This may have been accidental, but it broke up the flock, and effected the desired object. Traps were set to the number of one hundred and thirty, in different parts of the ranche. The trail of the big wolf and of the pack were traced up to one set of traps, and the doings of the leader were plainly marked in the dust. He had stopped the rest, warned by scent, and scratched around the trap till he found the buried chain and picket. These had been left bare ; and the same was done to a dozen other traps. On another part of the ranche he entered an H-shaped series of traps, and then detected the danger. The trail showed that he had slowly backed out on his own track, putting each paw down backwards until out of the dangerous ground. He had then sprung some of the traps by scratching clods and stones backwards at them, with his hind-feet. He was at last caught by dragging over the traps the body of a female wolf, the scent of which he followed.
This wolf-history represents the acme of animal cunning. The warfare against civilised man, raids made, as we may say, under the enemies' guns, could have been maintained for so long by no other animal, and represents the highest development even of wolf brains, which improve the further south they go, and consequently by contact and conflict with civilised man. The wolves of the "barren lands" of the far North are mere simpletons. Last summer they followed a hunter who had captured twelve musk ox calves for many days' journey, without devising means to kill one, though they followed the trail and sat within sight of his fire every night. The Currumpaw pack would have killed the musk oxen in a night. The cunning of the criminal dog is that of some forms of homicidal mania. He kills sheep usually to gratify his lust for slaughter ; but Mr. Thompson states that he has heard of a dog which added to its nightly crimes that of murdering the smaller dogs of the neighbourhood. He killed a number, and hid their bodies in a sand-pit. The details given of the life of a sheep-killing dog are, we think, taken from the records of one kept in Derbyshire. Poultry were killed by the dog as well as sheep. In the Isle of Wight last winter some unknown dog made two such raids, in one of which it killed forty fowls in a single week. It was never discovered. The Derbyshire dog was noted for its care of its sheep, which belonged to a small lowland farmer, who, like others, ran his flock on the moors. The dog was, however, savage and ill-conditioned to strangers. It slept in the house, and was never suspected, though sheep-worrying took place on most of the farms near. At last it was tracked in the snow from a fold where twenty sheep had been killed to the farm where it lived, the dog having apparently forgotten that the track would show, though it took partial means to conceal it by running along the top of a stone wall. The case was not proved till the daughter of the house slept in the kitchen where the dog lay, and saw it leap on the table, push through the window, and return with blood on its coat some hours later. It is not only by night these crimes are perpetrated by doge. Some years ago sheep were killed near a watering place in Devon by a mastiff owned by a lady. The proprietor
of the sheep saw the dog go into a pool and bathe, close to a flock of sheep. The dog then ran off and joined its mistress on the road near. A newly killed sheep lay inside the fold, and though there was not clear evidence to establish the dog's guilt, it was sent elsewhere and the sheep murders ceased.
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