Howling

“ The rustle of dry leaves is too sharp; it was like a very soft heavy rain on a window—a small dull padding padding: it was the feet of the wolves. They came nearer and grew louder and louder, but the noise was still muffled and soft. Their howling, however, was now loud and horrid. I suppose they cannot help howling; if they could, they would have too much power over poor creatures, coming upon them altogether at unawares; but as it is, they tell, whether they will or no, that they are upon the way. ”

“ This harvest, it must be now about six months since, my lads first announced that they heard oftentimes a tremendous howling in the forest, which, though the noise could not well be called human, yet my Franz always insisted it must be the voice of a man. Francis, indeed, seemed to be particularly aimed at, as the butt or prey of this howling spectre, for, when he went to a good station, the howling always frightened away the game ”

“ Suddenly their horses started violently, as a loud howl was heard behind, and repeated immediately from different quarters of the forest.
Alfred felt that it was the gathering of the ferocious beasts, which had been attracted from distant forests by the scent of the battlefield, and had thus happened to lie in increased numbers around their path. The howling continued to increase, and their horses sped onward as if mad with fear—it was all they could do to guide them safely. ”

“ Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveller that does the howling. ”

“ The bodily motion of the howlers is different, and is accompanied by a hoarse, disagreeable howling, like that of a pack of half-starved wolves, except that it is done to a certain musical accompaniment, enabling the participants to keep time, both as to the motion of the body and the hideous noise which they make. ”

“ The superstition that the howling of a dog, especially in the night time, portends the death of some person in the immediate neighbourhood, is yet, at the present day, firmly believed in, even by the middle, and by no means uneducated, classes in Lancashire. I listened, not very long ago, to the serious recital of a story by one who heard the howling and knew well the party whose death immediately followed. ”

“ From time to time more bound dogs were brought in and flung down. There was a continuous howling, especially contributed to by those which had lain in the sun since early morning and had no water. At times, all joined in, the control of the quietest breaking down before the wave of excitement and fear that swept spasmodically over all of them. ”

“ Howling with rage she made the leap again; when a blow on the head [93] from the butt end of a gun, held by a stout seaman, made her loosen her hold, and, with a savage growl, she fell to the ground. From there she next crawled to the body of the lion, licking the upper part of his body, and uttering the most wild and melancholy howls. She was evidently much wounded; but she managed to crawl round him several times, drawing her long tongue over his mane, and moving a paw, or his head, in hopes of noticing some sign of recognition. ”

“ Several of the dogs, becoming mangy, have been shot. Poor old ‘Howler,’ whom we left on the ice-floe, hoping he would recover and follow us, was found dead near the same place. Oh! the hours of misery I have spent in sleeping-bags, kept awake by that howling brute—howling, perhaps, just because another dog looked at him! But, for all his howlings and stealings, the ex-king was a good worker and did his duty, and that should be all required of any one, man or dog. ”

“ With a note resonant, and sharp as despair, that howl broke into the monotonous, sullenly persistent sound of the rain, rending the darkness, and then dying down was carried over the dark naked fields.
The dog howled—regularly, persistently, desperately, soberly—and to any one who heard that howling it seemed as though the impenetrable dark night itself were groaning and longing for the light, and he would wish himself with his wife by his warm fireside.
The dog howled.
THE LIE I
“You lie! I know you lie!”
“What are you shouting for? Is it necessary that every one should hear us?” ”

“ It does not seem to me that we should regard barking as a new and useful invention; there are, indeed, few such in the organic world. The sound appears to me to have been derived from the primitive habit of howling. ”

“ All the pupils are repeating their lessons in a loud voice, which is stimulated every six or seven minutes by the coarse howling of the long-bearded, large-turbaned and wide, loose-robed man, whom for convenience we shall call Hoja effendi, the lord teacher. These frequent howlings are generally accompanied with a hard stroke of a four-foot-long heavy stick upon the floor its full length ”

“ Thus, in Staffordshire, when a dog howls, the following advice is given: “Take off your shoe from the left foot, and spit upon the sole, place it on the ground bottom upwards, and your foot upon the place you sat upon, which will not only preserve you from harm, but stop the howling of the dog.” [412] A similar remedy is recommended in Norfolk: [413] “Pull off your left shoe, and turn it, and it will quiet him. A dog won’t howl three times after.” We are indebted to antiquity for this superstition, some of the earliest writers referring to it. ”

“ The animal is generally standing, or occasionally sitting, when the singular sound is heard. The muzzle is always elevated. The commencement is that of a perfect bark, ending abruptly and very singularly, in a howl, a fifth, sixth, or eighth higher than at the commencement. Dogs are often enough heard howling, but in this case it is the perfect bark, and the perfect howl rapidly succeeding to the bark. ”

“ The howler is an almost untamable wild animal. He never will dance at the end of a hurdy-gurdy grinder’s leash, and seldom will be on exhibit in zoos. He dies quickly in captivity, but only after becoming such a nuisance with the howling of a broken heart that zoo keepers are glad to be rid of him. Only one specimen has been kept in captivity at Barro, Colorado—a baby rescued by one of the Indian guides after she had fallen out of a tree. ”

“ It has frequently been urged that the animals are attracted by the lighted window, and that their howlings are nothing more than unpleasant appeals for admittance; and that often, by reason of the awe with which tradition has surrounded the noises, they terrify the invalid, and produce the end they are supposed to foretell. ”

“ They are so denominated from their habit of assembling in troops, and uttering the most terrible howlings, so loud that the forest is filled with their sonorous voices. Their cries can be heard at a half-league’s distance, and produce upon a stranger unaccustomed to such sounds a very disagreeable impression. The unusual strength of voice is accounted for by a peculiar drum-like construction of the os hyoides, common to all the genera of Sapajous, but more developed in some than in others; and those in whom the voice is loudest constitute the genus of Alouatles, or Howlers. ”

“ In this situation he may be compared to a man who has been tarred and feathered. The anxiety produced by this strange and novel predicament soon shows itself in dreadful howlings, which serve to call the watchful peasants, who in this state find no difficulty in shooting the mottled object of their detestation. ”

“ Very likely; and as most dogs occasionally howl in the night, it would be very strange if some person did not die after such howlings; but can we suppose that the Supreme Being employs shooting stars, insects, owls, and dogs, to announce to us the approach of our death? ”

“ They drink by suction, and it is said, that if the offspring which they have by a dog, should lap, they take a dislike to it. The cry which they make is not a regular bark, but a hoarse, ugly noise, and the howl which they delight in setting up at night, is one of the most melancholy sounds possible. They vary much in colour, being white, black, grey, brown, etc. Their digitigrade walk, sharp muzzle, oblique eyes, and hanging tail, in their wild state, are less conspicuous in domestication, and they then gradually assimilate themselves in appearance to our hounds. ”

“ It is the habit of troops of red howlers to indulge in nocturnal concerts, wherein four, five or six old males will pipe up and begin to howl in unison. The great volume of uncanny sound thus produced goes rolling through the still forest, far and wide; and to the white explorer who lies in his grass hammock in pitchy darkness, fighting off the mosquitoes and loneliness, and wondering from whence tomorrow's meals will come, the moral effect is gruesome and depressing. ”

“ Having given up my fox, I was meditating what manner of beasts these might be, when my answer came in a long, weird howl. No need to tell any one what that sound is. Instinct teaches every man to recognise the wolf’s howl, and once heard it is not easily forgotten. The first howl was followed by another and another, and though I have no wish to pose as a coward, I frankly admit I wished I was anywhere but three-quarters of a mile from a house, and all the distance two feet deep in snow, which would not bear my weight [Pg 24] on the surface. ”

“ After despatching our supper, and adjusting, in talk, the day’s rather eventful incidents, and the morrow’s plan of march, we committed ourselves to rest, but had not sunk into forgetfulness, when a pack of wolves set up their howl in our vicinity. We had been told that these animals will not approach near a fire, and are not to be dreaded in a country where deer abound. They follow the track of the hunter, to share such part of the carcass as he leaves, and it is their nature to herd together and run down this animal as their natural prey. ”

“ The brown howler is bad enough, but the red howler makes the night hideous with his cries. They screech as if all the animals in the forest were eating each other up. Some zoos won't have Little-old-man-howler, as he is called, at all. ”

“ The boys hunted rats with him at night, when they came out of the stables that backed down to the Hydraulic, for water; and a dog who liked above all things to lie asleep on the back-step, by day, and would no more think of chasing a pig out of the garden than he would think of sitting up all night with a coon, would get frantic about rats, and would perfectly wear himself out hunting them on land and in the water, and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy ”

“ He tracked the deer to its lair, the wild boar to its soil, the hare to its form; and followed their traces to discover where they went at night.
And then, when darkness again fell on the Forest, he gave a howl,—a regular wolf’s howl, in answer to which came crowding to him the wolves that he had invited the night before, followed by old and young recruits, even to the very cubs of a year old. ”

“ The young native had already descended to the water to comply, when a long howl was raised on the edge of the river, and was borne swiftly off into the depths of the forest, as though the beasts, of their own accord, were abandoning their prey in sudden terror. ”

“ To allow space for the hyoid, the sides of the lower jaw are very deep and expanded. The muzzle is projecting, and the profile of the face slopes regularly backwards from the muzzle to the crown. The long tail is highly prehensile, thickly furred, with the under surface of the extremity naked. Howlers dwell in large companies, and in the early morning, and again in the evening, make the woods resound with their cries, which are often continued throughout the night. They feed on leaves, and are in the habit of sitting on the topmost branches of trees. ”

“ The instant a hound catches the scent, he will see him drop his tail horizontally, and spring to the front, the one who has lost it elevating his, as if engaged in questing. Keeping his look-out always upon the leaders, and leaving the body of the pack to follow a similar system, he turns his horse as he sees the chase lean, and thus is going at his ease inside the circle, around which others can hardly live at the best their nags can accomplish. When a huntsman is coming past with hounds,—particularly at check in a lane or road,—get out of his way all you can ”

“ Just new the old howl against Rome is being renewed—the howl of the wolves against the shepherd; and the sheep now and again think it necessary to apologize to the wolves for the care their ever-watchful guardian keeps over them, and also try to make them understand that it is both convenient and necessary that he should keep a dog and carry a crook. It is little wonder that the wolves bark and snarl in reply to the apologies, and see no force in our argument for either the dog or crook. ”

“ The deer-hound's haste, the hunter's fire,"
they pursue their prey—never straying from the track of their victim—and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their prey, and falls a prize to the tireless pursuers. ”

“ The dog turns his nose upward, and with open mouth, emits a howl which, at first hoarse and low, rises into a shriller and higher note before completion and which may be repeated several times without closing the mouth. It is not an ordinary howl but rather a cry of distress, and, to the educated ear a grave note of warning. Sometimes the dog is dumb from the start. ”

“ Parties of hunters no longer go out with dogs of various kinds—greyhounds, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, all in leash, as our ancestors frequently did, ready to slip them on any kind of game which might present itself, and with bows also ready to make more sure of their prey. We have no battues, such as are still to be found in some parts of the continent, and which used to be the common mode of hunting in the Highlands, when the beasts of a whole district were driven into a small space, and subjected to a promiscuous slaughter ”