166 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
dome, sith they have greevous Woolfes and cruell 
foxes, beside some other of like disposition con- 
tinuallie conversant among them, to the general 
hindrance of their husbandmen and no small damage 
unto the inhabiters of those quarters.”* 
William Barclay, who was a native of Aberdeen- 
shire, and spent the early part of his life at the Court 
of Queen Mary, accompanied her Majesty on an 
excursion to the Highlands, and has left a curious 
account of a royal hunt at which he was present, 
and which was organized for the Queen by John, 
fourth Earl of Athole, in 1563. Two thousand High- 
landers were employed to drive all the deer from 
the woods and hills of Athole, Badenach, Mar, 
Moray, and the surrounding country. After men- 
tioning incidentally that the Queen ordered one of 
the fiercest dogs to be slipped at a Wolf—* Lawatus 
enim reging jussu, atque immissus in lupum, insignis 
admodum ac ferox canis” —Barclay concludes his 
account of the “drive” with the statement that 
there were killed that very day 360 deer, 5 Wolves, 
and some roes. 
According to Holinshed, Wolves were very de- 
structive to the flocks in Scotland during the reign 
of James VI. in 1577. At this time they were so 
numerous throughout the greater part of the High- 
lands, that in the winter it was necessary to provide 
houses, or ‘“‘spittals” as they were termed, to afford 
* Harrison’s “ Description of England,” prefixed to Holinshed’s 
‘*‘ Chronicles,” i. p. 378. 
t “De Regno et regali Potestate,” &c., 4to, 1600, p. 279. 
