212 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



reduced their numbers that they were no longer a serious 

 menace. Occasional small packs or single cunning survivors 

 were systematically hunted down by companies of men who 

 would track them to deep woods or swamps which were sur- 

 rounded and the animals driven out and often shot. In 1774, 

 Connecticut repealed the law that formerly offered a bounty 

 on wolves. But if wolves were then no longer dangerous to 

 stock in Connecticut, they continued to be so in the less settled 

 regions of southern New Hampshire and Maine. Bounties 

 were increased and hunting wolves became a regular occupa- 

 tion of some of the Indians or white hunters. The constant 

 war of extermination at length began to tell, and by the early 

 years of the last century few wolves were left in southern New 

 Hampshire and Vermont. In his history of the town of Gilsum, 

 near the present Keene, N. H., Hay ward in 1879 tells that in 

 March or April, 1828, took place what was then still remem- 

 bered as "the wolf hunt," when a lone individual that had 

 killed a number of sheep was finally hunted down, twice sur- 

 rounded by a party of determined farmers, and shot as it slunk 

 out from an old spruce top. Many similar tales may be found 

 in the local histories. The "last wolf" in Lancaster, N. H., 

 was trapped about 1840 according to local account, but I have 

 reason to believe that an occasional one or two came into the 

 White Mountain region till a much later date. Zadock Thomp- 

 son mentions a specimen in the University of Vermont that 

 was killed in Addison County about 1830, but probably they 

 occasionally were found well after that time. Merriam in his 

 "Mammals of the Adirondacks" (in 1882) lists wolves on 

 which bounties had been paid that were taken in St. Lawrence 

 and Washington Counties, N. Y., even up to the latter date. 

 When the last wolf was taken in Maine is perhaps uncertain. 

 The only specimen known to me from that State is a skin now 

 in the Boston Museum of Natural History, killed near Moose- 

 head Lake in 1863. The late Manly Hardy, who traveled all 

 over Maine as a trapper and fur buyer, and whose authority 

 is unquestioned, wrote in 1884 (Forest and Stream, vol. 22, p. 

 141) that "in 1853 wolves were very plenty, and for the next 

 five years were not scarce; plenty could be found within sixteen 

 miles of Bangor in 1857 and 1858. They seemed to leave 

 quite suddenly. The last I know of positively being taken was 

 . . . in 1860, at Munsengun . . . There were rumors 



