194 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
This proposed Act, however, seems never to have 
become law, for no mention of it is made in the eight 
volumes of Irish Statutes published by authority in 
Dublin in 1765. It is not surprising therefore that 
the ravages of the Wolves in Ireland continued. In 
1619 their numbers in Ulster compelled people “to 
house their cattle in the bawnes of their castles, 
where all the winter nights they stood up to their 
bellies in dirt. Another reason is to prevent thieves 
and false-hearted brethren who have spies abroad, 
and will come thirty miles out of one province into 
another to practise a cunning robbery.”* 
Howell, in one of his ‘‘ Familiar Letters,” written 
to Sir James Crofts, September 6th, 1624, says :—A 
pleasant tale I heard Sir Thomas Fairfax relate of 
a souldier in Ireland, who having got his passport to 
go for England, as he past through a wood with 
his knapsack upon his back, being weary, he sate 
down under a tree wher he open’d his knapsack and 
fell to some victuals he had ; but upon a sudden he 
was surprizd with two or three Woo/fs, who, coming 
towards him, he threw them scraps of bread and 
cheese till all was done; then the Woolfs making a 
nearer approach unto him, he knew not what shift to 
make, but by taking a pair of bagpipes which he 
had, and as soon as he began to play upon them, the 
Woolfs ran all away as if they had been scar’d out of 
their wits. Whereupon the souldier said, “A pox 
take you all, if I had known you had lov’d musick 
so well, you should have had it before dinner!” 
* Gainsford’s “ Glory of England,” p. 148. 
