6 THE COMMON WOLF. 



In England wolves must still have been common in Yorkshire in the 

 reign of Richard II., for in the account-rolls of Whitby Abbey there is 

 an entry* of a payment for dressing wolf-skins. They were probably 

 exterminated in the reign of Henry VII. The last in Scotland is said 

 to have been destroyed in 1743, while one is asserted to have been 

 killed in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland in 1770. Should these 

 statements, however, be inaccurate, it is, at any rate, certain that Wolves 

 existed in Scotland till 1680, and in Ireland down to 1710. 



The size and proportions of the Wolf roughly resemble those of a 

 large mastiff, though individuals, especially from different localities, differ 

 greatly in size. 



The prevailing colour is a tawny or rufous grey, and the greyness is 

 apt to increase with old age. The head, back of the neck, shoulders, 

 loins, and crupper are blackish with yellow tints. There is an underfur 

 of a slate or a brown colour, amongst which whitish and black-tipped 

 hairs are intermixed. The thighs and outsides of the legs reddish yellow, 

 as is also the tail, save that the end is black. The inner side of the limbs 

 is of a dirty yellowish grey. The lower jaw, the margin of the upper jaw, 

 the inside of the ears, and the belly are more or less white. A black 

 mark extends vertically from the wrist up the front of the leg, and there 

 is sometimes a V-shaped black mark, with the apex directed backwards, 

 over the shoulders. 



The form and proportions of the skull, and the shape and relative 

 development of the different teeth, agree generally with those which 

 have been described in our introductory chapter. 



In Plate I. we have a representation of a wolf from the Pyrenees, 

 which is of a somewhat brighter, richer tint than that commonly found 

 in the Wolves of Central Europe ; but Spanish wolves are often very 

 much darker, with a great deal of black in the coat, and sometimes are 

 almost entirely black, and but little more than twenty years ago a 

 black wolf was killed f near Dinant, in Belgium. North-European 



* See J. E. Harting's ' British Animals extinct during Historic Times.' Trubner 

 &Go. : 1880. 



t See ' Archives Cosmologiques ' (Bruxelles, 1868), p. 78, plate 5. 



