Mainly About Wolves

Ernest Thompson Seton

Description

“Mainly about Wolves” is a 1937 work famous American naturalist and writer Ernest Thompson Seton. It explores the subject of wolves, looking their nature and natural history with reference to the author's experiences hunting and tracking them. This classic volume will appeal to those with an interest in wolves, as well as tracking in general and other related outdoor pursuits. Ernest Thompson Seton (1860 – 1946) was an English author and wildlife artist who founded the Woodcraft Indians in 1902. He was also among the founding members of the Boy Scouts of America, established in 1910. He wrote profusely on this subject, the most notable of his scouting literature including “The Birch Bark Roll” and the “Boy Scout Handbook”. Seton was also an early pioneer of animal fiction writing, and he is fondly remembered for his charming book “Wild Animals I Have Known” (1898). Other notable works by this author include: “Lobo, Rag and Vixen” (1899), “Two Little Savages” (1903), and “Animal Heroes” (1911). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Canis lupus
• Herd behavior
• Gray wolf

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528767132
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MAINLY ABOUT
WOLVES
Copyright 2017 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Ernest Thompson Seton
Ernest Thompson Seton was born on 14 th August 1860, in South Shields, County Durham, England. He grew up to be a pioneering author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and one of the originators of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
The Seton family emigrated to Canada when Ernest was just six years old, and most of his childhood was consequently spent in Toronto. As a youth, he retreated to the woods to draw and study animals as a way of avoiding his abusive father - a practice which shaped the rest of his adult life. On his twenty-first birthday, Seton s father presented him with a bill for all the expenses connected with his childhood and youth, including the fee charged by the doctor who delivered him. He paid the bill, but never spoke to his father again.
Originally known as Ernest Evan Thompson, Ernest changed his name to Ernest Thompson Seton, believing that Seton had been an important name in his paternal line. He became successful as a writer, artist and naturalist, and moved to New York City to further his career. Seton later lived at Wyndygoul , an estate that he built in Cos Cob, a section of Greenwich, Connecticut. After experiencing vandalism by some local youths, Seton invited the young miscreants to his estate for a weekend, where he told them what he claimed were stories of the American Indians and of nature.
After this experience, he formed the Woodcraft Indians (an American youth programme) in 1902 and invited the local youth to join (at first just boys, but later girls as well). The stories that Seton told became a series of articles written for the Ladies Home Journal , and were eventually collected in The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians in 1906. Seton also met Scouting s founder, Lord Baden-Powell, in 1906. Baden-Powell had read Seton s book of stories, and was greatly intrigued by it. After the pair had met and shared ideas, Baden-Powell went on to found the Scouting movement worldwide, and Seton became vital in the foundation of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and was its first Chief Scout (from 1910 - 1915). Despite this large achievement, Seton quickly became embroiled in disputes with the BSA s other founders, Daniel Carter Beard and James E. West.
In addition to disputes about the content of Seton s contributions to the Boy Scout Handbook, conflicts also arose about the suffrage activities of his wife, Grace, and his British citizenship (it being an American organization). In his personal life, Seton was married twice. The first time was to Grace Gallatin in 1896, with whom he had one daughter, Ann (who later changed her name to Anya), and secondly to Julia M. Buttree, with whom he adopted an infant daughter, Beulah (who also changed her first name, to Dee). Alongside his work with the Woodcraft Indians and the BSA, Seton also found time to pursue his primary interest - that of nature writing.
Seton was an early pioneer of animal fiction writing, his most popular work being Wild Animals I Have Known (1898), which contains the story of his killing of the wolf Lobo. He later became involved in a literary debate known as the nature fakers controversy, after John Burroughs published an article in 1903 in the Atlantic Monthly attacking writers of sentimental animal stories. The controversy lasted for four years and included important American environmental and political figures of the day, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Seton was also associated with the Santa Fe arts and literary community during the mid-1930s and early 1940s, which comprised a group of artists and authors including author and artist Alfred Morang, sculptor and potter Clem Hull, painter Georgia O Keeffe, painter Randall Davey, painter Raymond Jonson, leader of the Transcendental Painters Group, and artist Eliseo Rodriguez.
In 1931, Seton became a United States citizen. He died on 23 rd October, 1946 (aged eighty-six) in Seton Village in northern New Mexico. Seton was cremated in Albuquerque. In 1960, in honour of his 100th birthday and the 350th anniversary of Santa Fe, his daughter Dee and his grandson, Seton Cottier (son of Anya), in a fitting tribute to the man who loved his surrounding countryside so much, scattered his ashes over Seton Village from an airplane.
Stories by the same Author
ANIMAL HEROES
BILLY THE DOG THAT MADE GOOD
BIOGRAPHY OF A GRIZZLY
BIOGRAPHY OF AN ARCTIC FOX
BIOGRAPHY OF A SILVER FOX
BOOK OF WOODCRAFT AND INDIAN LORE
CHINK AND OTHER STORIES
FOAM THE RAZORBACK
JOHNNY BEAR AND OTHER STORIES
KATUG, THE SNOW CHILD
LIVES OF THE HUNTED
LOBO AND OTHER STORIES
MONARCH THE BIG BEAR
OLD SILVER GRIZZLE
RAGGYLUG AND OTHER STORIES
ROLF IN THE WOODS
TRAIL OF THE SANDHILL STAG
TWO LITTLE SAVAGES
WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN
Edited
FAMOUS ANIMAL STORIES
Natural History
LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTHERN ANIMALS (2 vols.)
LIVES OF GAME ANIMALS (8 vols.)
also
GOSPEL OF THE REDMAN
Ernest Thompson Seton
MAINLY ABOUT
WOLVES
Preface
MORE than half of this book is given over to stories of historic wolves; for, of all wild beasts, the wolf had the largest share of interest among our Aryan ancestors of the days when men were groping for light and for leadership from savagery.
Throughout the early history of Europe, the wolves were a nightly terror to man and beast. They must have existed in thousands, if not by millions; and, because they combined numbers with strength and cunning, there was no creature that could face and fight them with success.
High walls and nightly vigilance were imposed on all human dwellers of the land. The wild things had to seek safety in holes, in tall trees, in impenetrable thickets, on islands, or on inaccessible rocks that were easily defended.
But the wolfish toll went on. The fear of the wolf was on all the world without ceasing. Yet we find comparatively little mention of the wolf in history. Why? Let us illustrate.
Chicago has, in its subsoil lurking-places and darker corners, millions of rats. Yet we see no daily mention of the fact in the current records. It is well known and taken for granted; their wastage is an annual and expected overhead. But when the rats are forced by fire or flood into open view, and in a desperate mob attack dogs and men, killing children and helpless things, then only is it that they come into notice. And a lurid paragraph is filed in every print house, setting forth details.
So with the wolves. In ordinary measure of destruction, they were accepted as inevitable; but when a harder winter forced the wolves into larger, fiercer bands so they came into the open and devastated a town, then was there made historic record. Or when some wolf of giant size and superlupine cunning came upon the stage, then was a marvellous story full set forth, shocking, blood-curdling, never-to-be-forgotten; then was a red, red chapter writ.
It would be easy to give the names of a score of these heroic wolves, and something of the lives they lived. Two at least there were whose appalling records won for them large space on the scroll of history-long chapters-red-unique. These two, I give at some length- Courtaud, the King Wolf of France ( A.D . 1430); and La B te, the Beast Wolf of Gevaudan in South France ( A.D. 1764). Both of these belonged in the man-eater class. While all the main outlines of these two stories are historically correct, I have embellished and expanded with the utmost freedom.
The Last of the Irish Wolves is actual history. The incident herein related is authentic, although in telling it I have developed it somewhat. But it seems beyond doubt that Rory Carragh, the famous wolf-hunter, did, with the help of a small boy, kill the two great wolves of Tyrone, as related, about A.D. 1658. (See Sir James Ware, Works , Dublin, 1764; also Biography of a Tyrone Family , Belfast, 1829, p. 74.)
Little Marie and the Wolves in brief form was recorded by the anonymous author of Wolf Hunting in Brittany (1850). He gives it as actual history; and it serves, in contrast with Courtaud, to show how completely the modern wolves in France had learned to respect human life.
The main thought in The Wolf and the Primal Law was suggested by several hunter tales. I saw nothing of it personally, but have heard of many similar cases. In bare outline, the final incident was supplied by James R. Lowther, of Victoria, B.C. He guarantees its authenticity.
Rincon, or the Call in the Night was, in its fundamentals, a personal experience; but is expanded as fully as seemed helpful to the romance.
The Wolf on the Running-board is told as it happened, without embellishment.
There was a time when the American wolf was, above all things, a creature of valour and speed. By these he lived, and had no fear of any other creature, however great its speed and valour.
But a mighty change came over the big buffalo wolves when the whiteman appeared on the scene, equipped with horses for speed and modern guns for destruction-a combination too strong for any beast, however valiant it might be.
These were the things that turned the fierce roistering buffalo wolves into creatures of cunning above all that live in the great broad West.
Those who know the wolf only as a hateful thing, a destroyer of stock, a bandit on the ranges, may be surprised and informed if they ponder the story of Wosca, the Cody Wolf , which is f