it is said
whales have lived to be a thousand years old. A wolf is aged at
twenty, a caribou or fox at fifteen. A personal acquaintance of the
Doctor was a black-backed gull which had been in captivity for
thirty-two years.

The timber-wolf, which elsewhere is so fierce an animal, is
comparatively mild-mannered in Labrador, and Grenfell has found no
record of these wolves attacking men, though in packs they have often
followed the settlers to the doors of their houses.

There is nothing good to be said of the Labrador timber-wolf. Like the
eggers of Audubon's time, he seems to kill very often not for hunger's
sake but for the sheer love of killing animals that cannot fight back.
Often the bodies of deer are found with only the tongues and the
windpipe torn out by the mean and cowardly slayer.

Sometimes the wolf bites the deer in the small of the back: or several
wolves will stalk a caribou, some circling about to distract the
attention of their prey while others creep up on it from behind.

The caribou are amiable and affectionate, and it is easy to tame them
if they are taken in hand when they are young. They make very
satisfactory pets.

Grenfell had one which went with him on his mission boat, like a dog
or a cat.

If not taken ashore, it would stand crying at the rail.

It would follow him about while on land, and swim after its master
when Grenfell was in a rowboat.

In the field it would come running to be petted, and if left behind
within the palings would stand up on its hind legs and try desperately
to butt its way out and follow the Doctor.

Sometimes the caribou has been successfully used to haul a sled.

The Labrador black bear is almost as harmless as the caribou.

Grenfell bought a cub, and in the winter-time gave him a barrel, to
see if he would know what to do, having no mother to guide him.

The bear knew by instinct how to make himself a warm and cosy nest for
his long winter sleep.

He found grass and moss, put them in the barrel, and trampled them
down to make a padded lining such as a human being could hardly have
bettered.

We all know the story of General Israel Putnam,--how he crawled into
the wolf-den at Pomfret and shot a wolf "by the light of its own
eyes." A trapper in Labrador, instead of crawling into a den where an
animal lay, entered an empty lair, under a cliff. It seemed to have
been made on purpose for campers.

He lit his small lantern, ate his supper, and then cu