WOLVES. 107 



not only to their number, but also to the injury which thej- inflicted on the inhabitants. King 

 Edgar commuted the punishment of various crimes into the delivery of a certain numlicr of wolves' 

 shins ; and he cleared Wales of them by commuting a tax of gold and silver imposed on the Welsh 

 princes by Athclstane, into an annual tribute of 300 wolves' heads. They must have been felt to be 

 a serious scourge before this step would have been taken, and we are through it enabled to ascertain 

 how many wolves go to make a serious scourge, for in four j-ears they were all rooted out ; therefore 

 there must then have been 1200 Wolves in Wales. I suspect a less number turned loose in tho 

 principality nowadays would be thought a very sufficient scourge. In England, however, they 

 flourished for long afterwards. In Edward I.'s reign they were so bad that a wolf-hunter-general 

 was appointed ; and it would appear that the coimtics which were most overrun with them were 

 Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and Stafford; for, on the 14th May, 1281, a mandamus was 

 issued commanding all bailiffs iu those counties to assist " Peter Corbet," the wolf-hunter-general, 

 in their destruction. Various estates are still hold on the tenure of hunting and keeping the 

 neighbouring districts free of Wolves ; WormhUl in Derbj'shire, and Harbottle Castle, and 

 Otterburne, in the north, are so specified. In the reign of Athelstane they had so abounded in 

 Yorkshire that a retreat was built at Flixton in that county, " to defend passengers from the Wolves 

 that they should not bo devoured by them." The date of their final extirjjation in England is not 

 known, but they still infested Sherwood Forest in the reign of Henry VI., for in the eleventh year of 

 his reign Sir Eobert Plumpton obtained a bovate of land called Wolf-hunt Land, in the county of 

 Nottingham, "by service of winding a horn and chasing or frightening the Wolves in the forest of 

 Sherwood." The last Wolf in Scotland was killed by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, in 1680. They 

 also inhabited Ireland, and seemed to liave lingered longer there than in cither England or Scotland. 

 The last presentment for killing them in the county of Cork was made in 1710. 



Whether the European Wolf is the same as the North American Wolf is a much- vexed question. 

 The preponderance of opinion in former times was rather iu favour of their identitj% while nowadays 

 the opposite view prevails. The same difficulty occurs mih regard to all tlie Wolves found in North 

 America. There is no middle ground between considering them all distinct species or aU varieties 

 of one species. There is the pure white Wolf of the Upper Missouri ; the dusky, blackish, plumbeous 

 Wolf of the Missouri ; the entirely black Wolf of Florida and the Southern States; and the entirely 

 red or rufous Wolf of Texas, all varying in shape as well as in colour, the more southern ones 

 ajjpearing usually more slender and standing higher on the legs, partly perhaps in consequence 

 of the comparative shortness and compactness of their fur. These, however, are local in their 

 distribution, the more common and generally distributed colour being grey, which is found all 

 over North America, from tho Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic regions. How ftxr if extends into 

 Mexico we do not exactly know. Dr. Spencer Baird is of opinion that, putting aside the Prairie 

 Wolf or Coyote, which he thinks intermediate between the Wolf and the Fox, there is only one 

 species of Wolf in North America, and that distinct from the European Wolf.* 



Tho whole of the South American Canid.^j; belong to the Dogs and not to the Foxes, as some 

 naturalists have thought. This is i)roved, not only by their not possessing the foxy smell of tho latter, 

 but by anatomical distinctions, such as the conformation of the post-orbital process of the frontal 

 bone, pointed out by Burmeister as one of the most characteristic differences between the Wolves and 

 the Foxes. Like the Wolves, too, they have tho pupil of the eye circular, whUe in the Fox it is 



* Daird iu " UnituJ States' Pacific Railroad Exploration," lf>J7 vol. viii. p. 10."). 



