trable mystery. It is to these we
mean to direct our attention on the present occasion; but before doing
so, it will be well just to glance at the natural history of the wild
children of Europe.[2]

The most remarkable specimen, and the best type of the class, was
found in the year 1725, in a wood in Hanover. With the appearance of a
human being--of a boy about thirteen years of age--he was in every
respect a wild animal, walking on all-fours, feeding on grass and
moss, and lodging in trees. When captured, he exhibited a strong
repugnance to clothing; he could not be induced to lie on a bed,
frequently tearing the clothes to express his indignation; and in the
absence of his customary lair among the boughs of a tree, he crouched
in a corner of the room to sleep. Raw food he devoured with relish,
more especially cabbage-leaves and other vegetables, but turned away
from the sophistications of cookery. He had no articulate language,
expressing his emotions only by the sounds emitted by various animals.
Although only five feet three inches, he was remarkably strong; he
never exhibited any interest in the female sex; and even in his old
age--for he was supposed to be seventy-three when he died--it was only
in external manners he had advanced from the character of a wild beast
to that of a good-tempered savage, for he was still without
consciousness of the Great Spirit.

In other children that were caught subsequently to Peter, for that was
the name they gave him, the same character was observable, although
with considerable modifications. One of them, a young girl of twelve
or thirteen, was not merely without sympathy for persons of the male
sex, but she held them all her life in great abhorrence. Her temper
was ungovernable; she was fond of blood, which she sucked from the
living animal; and was something more than suspected of the cannibal
propensity. On one occasion, she was seen to dive as naturally as an
otter in a lake, catch a fish, and devour it on the spot. Yet this
girl eventually acquired language; was even able to give some
indistinct account of her early career in the woods; and towards the
close of her life, when subdued by long illness, exhibited few traces
of having once been a wild animal. Another, a boy of eleven or twelve,
was caught in the woods of Canne, in France. He was impatient,
capricious, violent; rushing even through crowded streets like an
ill-trained dog; slovenly and disgusting in his manners