annual sleep, living, meanwhile, upon their own fat; for they never fail to carry a good stock to bed with them in the autumn, and they wake up very thin in the spring. Their flesh is said to taste like pork. They live on all sorts of fruits and berries, wild cherries, grapes, and even the small whortleberries. Honey is well known as one of their greatest delicacies. They also like potatoes and Indian corn. They eat insects, small quadrupeds and birds, but prefer sweet fruits to any other food. They are from four to six feet in length, and three feet in height to the foreshoulders.
The moose, the stag, and the deer we have already noticed as still found within our borders.
The panther, also, it would seem, has made us quite a recent visit.
Next in size to these larger quadrupeds comes the Wolf. The American species measures four or five feet in length, and is rather more robust than that of Europe. Formerly it was believed to be smaller. We have two varieties in New York, the black and the gray, the first being the most rare. They are quite common in the northern counties, and are said to destroy great numbers of the deer, hunting them in packs of eight or ten. They are particularly successful in destroying their prey in winter, for in summer the deer take to the water and escape; but in winter, on the ice, the poor creatures are soon overtaken. The hunters say that the wolves destroy five deer where one is killed by man. Some years after this little village was founded, the howl of the wolf, pursuing the deer on the ice, was a common sound of a winter's night, but it is now many years, half a century, perhaps, since one has been heard of in this neighborhood.
