t had actually seen and examined, near Agra, a child which had been
recovered from the wolves. The story of Romulus and Remus, which all
schoolboys and the vast majority of grown people regard as a myth,
appears in a different light when one studies the question of
wolf-children, and ascertains how it comes to pass that boys are found
living on the very best terms with such treacherous and rapacious
animals as wolves, sleeping with them in their dens, sharing the raw
flesh of deer and kids which the she-wolf provides, and, in fact,
leading in all essentials the actual life of a wolf.

"A young she-wolf has a litter of cubs, and after a time her instinct
tells her that they will require fresh food. She steals out at night in
quest of prey. Soon she espies a weak place in the fence (generally
constructed of thatching grass and bamboos) which encloses the
compound, or 'unguah,' of a poor villager. She enters, doubtless, in
the hope of securing a kid; and while prowling about inside looks into
a hut where a woman and infant are soundly sleeping. In a moment she
has pounced on the child, and is out of reach before its cries can
attract the villagers. Arriving safely at her den under the rocks, she
drops the little one among her cubs. At this critical time the fate of
the child hangs in the balance. Either it will be immediately torn to
pieces and devoured, or in a most wonderful way remain in the cave
unharmed. In the event of escape, the fact may be accounted for in
several ways. Perhaps the cubs are already gorged when the child is
thrown before them, or are being supplied with solid food before their
carnivorous instinct is awakened, so they amuse themselves by simply
licking the sleek, oily body (Hindoo mothers daily rub their boy babies
with some native vegetable oil) of the infant, and thus it lies in the
nest, by degrees getting the odor of the wolf cubs, after which the
mother wolf will not molest it. In a little time the infant begins to
feel the pangs of hunger, and hearing the cubs sucking, soon follows
their example. Now the adoption is complete, all fear of harm to the
child from wolves has gone, and the foster-mother will guard and
protect it as though it were of her own flesh and blood.

"The mode of progression of these children is on all fours--not, as a
rule, on the hands and feet, but on the knees and elbows. The reason
the knees are used is to be accounted for by the fact that, owing to
the great leng