1922. ^CHARFF.— The Wolf in Ireland. 135 



Wolves sc'ciii to have become more plentiful in Ireland 

 during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and it 

 was the custom then to drive cattle and sheep into special 

 enclosures at night to protect them from the ravages of 

 their inveterate enemy. In the reign of James I. an Act 

 was passed in 161 1 for the killing of wolves and other vermin ; 

 and in the year 1652 Cromwell issued an Order in Council 

 prohibiting the exportation of \\olf-dogs from Ireland. 

 To offer special inducements for the destruction of Wolves, 

 the sum of £6 was offered by the State for every bitch wolf 

 and £5 for a male wolf. For a cub able to hunt for itself 

 £2 was paid, and ten shilhngs for every suckhng cub. All 

 these measures had the desired effect, and wolves rapidly 

 diminished all over the country. It is stated that the last 

 wolf in Connaught was killed about the year 1700. But in 

 other places it seems to have survived still longer. Thompson 

 tells us that it was not hiially extirpated in Kerry until 1710, 

 and that three places are commemorated each as having 

 had the last Irish Wolf killed there, viz., one in the South, 

 another near Glenarm, and a third — ^^olfhill — three miles 

 from Belfast.^ According to Richardson, \\olves were still 

 known to be in Wexford about the years 1730-40, and he 

 aflnnis that a W'olf was killed in the \\'icklow Mountains in 

 1770.- In England it had already disappeared during the 

 reign of Henry VII. ; while it lingered on in Scotland until 

 the year 1743. 



It is interesting to note that no absolutely reliable dis- 

 tinction between the Wolf and the large Irish Wolf-hound 

 has as yet been discovered. The limb bones of the two are 

 quite indistinguishable. The molar teeth among what we 

 believe to have been wolf-remains in the Irish caves are 

 no doubt larger than those of the W^olf-hound, but 

 they also exceed in size those of the modern European W'o^lf. 

 Only the complete skull furnishes a fairly reliable test. 

 This test is founded on the position of the eye-sockets. It 

 is a well known fact that the position of the eyes does not 



1 William Thompson : Natural History of Ireland, Vol. iv., 1S56. 

 '^ H. D. Richardson ; The Irish Wolf-dog. Irish Penny Journal, i'6.\i 



