KXTERMI NATION OF ANIMALS. 



The brown bear ( Ursus urctos} was once wild in this country, and 

 afforded to the lovers of the chase much amusement. At what time" 

 the last English bear was destroyed does not appear, but it was probably 

 after the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as bear baiting was then a favourite 

 amusement ; though the bears employed for the purpose might have 

 been brought from abroad, as the importation of bears is known to have 

 been carried on long previous to their extirpation from this country^ 

 The last bear wild in Scotland is said to have perished in the year 1057. 



Wild-boars were in former times common in Britain ; but the enclos- 

 ing of land, and the intentional worry to which they were subjected, 

 have long extirpated the whole race. The time at which they became' 

 extinct in this country seems not to have been recorded. The celebrated 

 Welsh legislator, Hoel Dda, is said to have prohibited his grand hunts- 

 man from chasing wild-boars at any other time that between the middle 

 of November and the beginning of Decembejr. " William the Con- 

 queror punished with the loss of their eyes any that were convicted of 

 killing the wild-boar, the stag, or the roe-buck ; and Fitz-Stephens 

 tells us, that the vast forest that in his time grew on the north side of 

 London was the retreat of stags, wild-boars, &c."* 



That sagacious and amusing animal, the beaver (Castor Jiber}, once 

 dwelled in our lakes and ponds ; but the value of its fur found it so 

 many pursuers that the species has long since disappeared. It is sup- 

 posed to have become scarce at the end of the ninth, and to have become 

 extinct in the twelfth century. Pennant states that Giraldus Cam- 

 brensis, in his Itinerarium Cambriee, remarks that when he travelled 

 through Wales in 1188, beavers were only found in the river Teivi- 

 The skins of beavers forming so extensive and lucrative a trade, causes 

 them to be eagerly sought after in Canada and the other countries 

 which they at present inhabit ; and such numbers are annually destroyed, 

 that the unwelcome prospect presents itself of their soon becoming uni- 

 versally extinct. Indeed, it is reported, that they have already become 

 scarce in North America. 



The Urus Scoticus, or wild-bull, was formerly common in England and 

 Scotland. William Fitz-Stephens mentions among the animals inhabit- 

 ing the forest situated on the north of London, wild-bulls. They have 

 long since, however, been extinct ; but the precise time when they be- 

 came so has not been recorded, though it is generally supposed to have 

 been prior to the death of Henry the Eighth in 1547- The breed was 



*' British Zoology, vol. i, p. 44. 

 VOL. II. NO. IV. C C 



