84 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



Mr. H. Byng wrote to the Zoological Society in 

 1870, he stated that the wolves were almost ex- 

 terminated. In 1876 the Challenger expedition 

 visited the Falklands, but Professor Moseley, a well- 

 informed and enthusiastic naturalist, in his account 

 of the visit, makes no mention of the native wolf. 

 Indeed, this interesting species was exterminated in 

 that year, the last survivor being killed at Shallow 

 Bay, West Falkland. A final relic of the vanished 

 race was secured in the form of a skull which Mr. 

 E. A. Holmsted found on West Falkland about this 

 time, and presented to the Royal College of 

 Surgeons* Museum. So utterly was the Antarctic 

 wolf destroyed that in 1904 Mr. Rupert Vallentin 

 was unable to find their very burrows. 



It is almost pathetic to notice that when a species 

 has passed for ever from the earth reports of its 

 continued existence continue to reach the press of 

 Europe. The case of the true quagga of South 

 Africa is an apt illustration of this : ^ so also is the 

 Antarctic wolf, since in 1904 a gentleman writing to 

 The Field stated that the animal was not extinct, 

 since it occurred abundantly in Tierra del Fuego, 

 where over three hundred had been recently killed 

 on a single run because they worried the sheep. 

 These "wolves" were however probably referable 

 to the culpeo or Magellanic fox, a well-known species 



1 Renshaw; "Natural History Essays,"' p. 179. Tlie true quagga was 

 exterminated in Soutli Africa about tlie same time as the Antarctic wolf 

 in the Falklands. 



