INTRODUCTION. 9 
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 eighty miles, including within 
it Ettrick and numerous other forests ;* and further 
north the great Caledonian wood, known even at 
Rome, covered the greater part of both the Low- 
lands and Highlands, its recesses affording shelter at 
one time to bears, wolves, wild-boars, and wild white 
cattle. | 
Enough, perhaps, has been here advanced to show 
that the whole of this immense range of mountains 
and hills, with its vast forests and wastes, was as 
favourable a tract of country for the preservation of 
aboriginal wild animals as could well be conceived ; 
but for further details of the situation and former 
extent of English forests the reader may be referred 
to Whitaker’s “ History of Manchester” (Bk. I. 
p. 337); Gilpm’s “ Forest Scenery’ (vol. u.), to 
which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in his edition 
(1834) has made some valuable additions ; Scrope’s 
“Art of Deer Stalking” (3rd ed. 1847); and Mr. 
Evelyn Shirley’s “ English Deer Parks” (1867). 
To describe the various modes of hunting in these 
early times would be beside the purpose of the present 
work, which is, rather, to collect together evidence, 
geological and historical, of the former existence here 
of certain wild animals which have become extinct 
svithin historic times. On the subject of hunting, 
* Storer, p. 68. 
