EXTIXCT IX BRITAIN WITHIN niSTOEIC TIMES. 7 



and unappropriated ; while close at hand towards the north was the 

 still larger and wilder forest of Eowland, and towards the South 

 that of llosendale, with an amazing- range of moors beyond it. 

 But this only shows how the great central range was covered and 

 fringed with wastes and forests on its western side. On the 

 eastern side in the same neighbourhood, the country of Craven, 

 it was just the same even as lately as the reign of Henry the 

 Eighth. Leland says: " The forest from a mile beneath Gnares- 

 burgh to very nigh Bolton yn Craven is about a twenty miles in 

 length, and in bredeth it is in sum places an viij miles," the 

 whole intermediate district between Bolton and Bowland Forest, or 

 between it and Whalley, being about as wild as anything can be."^' 



In the north of England the same state of things prevailed, often 

 on an even larger scale ; one foz'est alone in Cumberland, and that 

 not in its wildest part, being described in ' The Chartulary of 

 Lanercost Priory ' as extending at the time of the Norman Con- 

 quest from Carlisle to Penrith, a distance of eighteen miles, and as 

 " a goodly forest, full of woods, red deer and fallow, wild swine, 

 and all manner of wild beasts." As for Scotland, we can scarcely 

 over-estimate the wildness that everywhere prevailed, when in the 

 south a vast forest filled the intervening space between Chillingham 

 and Hamilton, a distance as the crow flies of about 80 miles, inclu- 

 ding within it Ettrick and numerous other forests, and further 

 north the great Caledonian forest, known even at Rome, covered 

 the greater part of both Lowlands and Highlands. 



But enough has been said to show how favourable was the con- 

 dition of the country for the preservation of aboriginal wild animals. 

 Let us now look into the evidence which can be adduced of their 

 former existence. 



The Bear. 



To treat first of the earliest historic species which has died out, 

 no doubt can exist that the brown bear inhabited Britain in times 

 of which history takes cognizance, the few written records which 

 have come down to us of its former existence here being supple- 

 mented by the best of all evidence, the discovery of its bones. Re- 

 mains have been found in the most recent formations throughout 

 England which can scarcely be regarded as fossil, and if not abso- 

 lutely identical with the bear which still exists in Northern Europe, 

 appertain only to a variety. From the variation in size which 

 has been observed in the skeletons of animals apparently adult, 

 there is reason to believe in the former existence in Great Britain 

 of at least two, if not three, species of bear. 



Our illustrious countryman, John Ray, in his ' Synopsis Metho- 

 dica Animalium ' (a small octavo volume published in 1693), 

 tells us (pp. 213-214) that his friend, Mr. Edward Llwyd, in an 

 old Welsh MS. on British Laws and Customs, discovered certain, 

 statutes and regulations relating to hunting, from which it appeared 



* Storer, ' Wild 'WTiite Cattle of Great Britain,' p. 67. 



