Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/388

372 steel jaws was avoided, and no sinewy foot was pinched. Finally, a wicked arrangement of innocent-looking logs set on a trigger was made to fall upon the poor wolf and destroy him. Peale got his “specimen,” but it was only by brute force; the coyote was a match for him in brain.

The skins of these wolves are not so highly valued as those of the big gray wolf, yet formerly they entered largely into the shipments of the Hudson Bay Company, for whom they were “cased” or stripped off wrong side out, as is done with the smaller animals. At present they are in demand to a small extent for making sleigh-robes, rugs, etc., but can scarcely be counted among the commercial furs.

The striking resemblance between the coyote and the majority of the snappish curs thronging in the camps of the redskins long ago attracted attention, and with good reason, for they are descended from tamed wolves of one kind or another, and the stock is constantly and designedly replenished by their masters through mixture with the wild wolves.

As a pet, the coyote is not in great favor. He will, indeed, stay at home and consent to friendly and even affectionate terms with his owner, but he seems to have not a particle of gratitude, nor any of that responsive attachment which makes the well-bred dog so lovable as a friend. Moreover, in spite of his natural subtlety and shrewdness, he shows little aptitude for learning the ordinary accomplishments of dogs, and so fails to sustain an interest in himself after the novelty of first acquaintance has worn off. He is faithful to his model, and lives up to the motto, “Once a coyote always a coyote."



HE next part of my duty is to exhort the fellows and members of this college "to search and study out the secrets of Nature by way of experiment." These are the directions I am to follow, and they give me a wide field to select a course of procedure from. The kind of exhortation I shall employ will consist in placing before you a view of the method of work which Harvey himself adopted, and then, as an incentive to follow his example, I will display some of the fruit yielded by recent research conducted upon the lines of his procedure.

The object to be promoted is the acquirement of additional knowledge. It is an old but true saying that knowledge is power. We accept the doctrine, which comes to us in definite shape from no less 