WOLF, HUGO (186o-1903), German composer, was born on the 13th of March 186o at Windischgraz in Styria. His father, who was in the leather trade, was a keen musician. From him Hugo learned the rudiments of the piano and the violin. After an unhappy school life, in which he showed little aptitude for anything but music, he went in 1875 to the Conservatoire. He appears to have learned very little there, and was dismissed in 1877 because of a practical joke in the form of a threatening letter to the director, for which he was perhaps unjustly held responsible. In 1884 he became musical critic to the Salonblatt, a Viennese society paper, and contrived by his uncompromisingly trenchant and sarcastic style to win notoriety.
The publication at the end of 1887 of twelve of his songs seems to have definitely decided the course of his genius, for about this time he retired from the Salonblatt, and resolved to devote his whole energies to song-composition. The nine years which followed practically represent his life as a composer. They were marked by periods of feverish creative activity, alternating with periods of mental and physical exhaustion, during whicti he was sometimes unable even to bear the sound of music. By the end of 1891 he had composed the bulk of his works, on which his fame chiefly rests, 43 MOrike Lieder, 20 Eichendorff Lieder, 51 Goethe Lieder, 44 Lieder from Geibel and Heyse's Spanisches Liederspiel, and 22 from Heyse's Italienisches Liederbuch, a second part consisting of 24 songs being added in 1896. Besides these were 13 settings of lyrics by different authors, incidental music to Ibsen's Fest auf Solhaug, a few choral and instrumental works, an opera in four acts, Der Corregidor, successfully produced at Mannheim in June 1896, and finally settings of three sonnets by Michelangelo in March 1897. In September of this year the malady which had long threatened descended upon him; he was placed in an asylum, released in the following January, only to be immured again some months later by his own wish, after an attempt to drown himself in the Traunsee. Four painful years elapsed before his death on the 22nd of February 1903.
What little success he obtained was due to the efforts of friends, critics and singers, to make his songs known, to the support of the Vienna Wagner-Verein, and to the formation in 1895 of the Hugo-Wolf-Verein in Berlin. No doubt it was also a good thing for his reputation that the firm of Schott undertook in 1891 the publication of his songs, but the financial result after five years amounted to 85 marks 35 pfennigs (about .14 ios.). He lived in cheap lodgings till in 1896 the generosity of his friends provided him with a house, which he enjoyed for one year.
Wolf's place among the greatest song-writers is due to the essential truth and originality of his creations, and to the vivid intensity with which he has presented them. No other composer has exhibited so scrupulous a reverence for the poems which he set. To displace an accent was for him as heinous an act of
sacrilege as to misinterpret a conception or to ignore an essential suggestion. Fineness of declamation has never reached a higher point than in Wolf's songs. (W. FD.) WOLF (Canis lupus), wild member of the typical section of the genus Canis (see CARNIVORA). Excluding some varieties of domestic dogs, wolves are the largest members of the genus, and have a wide geographical range, extending over nearly the whole of Europe and Asia, and North America from Greenland to Mex ico, but are not found in South America or Africa, where they are replaced by other members of the family. They present great diversities of size, length and thickness of fur, and coloration, although resembling each other in all important structural char acters. The Eurasian wolf (C. lupus) enters north-western India, but in the peninsula is replaced by the jackal-like C. pallipes. In North America, besides the timber wolf (C. nubilus) there is a smaller species (C. latrans) called the coyote (qq.v.) The ordinary colour of the wolf is grey. In northern countries the fur is longer and thicker, and the animal larger and more powerful than farther south. It is especially known to man in the countries it inhabits as the devastator of sheep flocks. Wolves catch their prey by running it down in open chase, which their speed and remarkable endurance enable them to do. Except dur ing summer when the young families of cubs are being separately provided for by their parents they assemble in troops or packs, and by their combined efforts are able to overpower and kill deer, antelopes and wounded animals of all sizes.
The history of the wolf in the British Isles and its gradual ex tirpation has been thoroughly investigated by J. E. Harting in his Extinct British Animals. Wolf-hunting was a favourite pursuit of the ancient Britons as well as of the Anglo-Saxons, and it was not until the reign of Henry VII. (1485-1509) that wolves appear to have become extinct in England. In Scotland the wolf maintained its hold for a much longer period. There is a well-known story of the last of the race being killed by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel in 168o, but there is evidence of wolves having survived in Suther landshire well into the following century. In Ireland the date of their extinction has been placed, upon the evidence of doubtful traditions, as late as 1766.
It is owing to their position that the British Islands have been able to clear themselves of these animals, for France, with no natural barriers to prevent their incursions from the east, is liable every winter to visits. In America wolves are now unknown east of the Mississippi and Lake Huron, but are numerous in the Rockies, on the Pacific coast and in North Canada. In Russia dur ing the last few years wolves have not only been abundant, but numerous cases of rabies have occurred among them. In Tas mania, the name wolf is applied to the thylacine (q.v.).