MARCH 45 



time of hunting them.' This was not from any sports- 

 manlike consideration for wolves, but because it was 

 not in human or at least in Highland nature to carry 

 a 'hag, half-hag, harquebuss, culvering,' or any other 

 small-arm, and refrain from taking a pot shot at deer. 



It seemed a strange revival of the past in the present 

 when the dust of centuries was shaken from this vener- 

 able statute and it was laid before a twentieth-century 

 House of Commons to be repealed. It started me to 

 hunt up old lore bearing on the extinction of the wolf 

 in Scotland. Throughout the sixteenth century wolves 

 seem to have been generally distributed throughout 

 the Scottish Highlands. Bishop Leslie of Ross pub- 

 lished in Paris his Latin Histwy of Scotland in 1578, 

 which was translated by Father Dalrymple in 1596, 

 containing the following statement on the subject : 



' Our nychbour Inglande has nocht ane wolf e, with quhilkes 

 [with which] afore they war mekle molested and invadet; 

 but we now [have] nocht few, z e contrare, verie monie and 

 maist cruel, chieflie in our north cuntrey, quhair [where] 

 nocht only invade thay scheip, oxne, ze [yea] and horse, bot 

 evin men, specialie women with barne [child] outragiouslie 

 and fercelie thay ouirthrows.' 



Improvement in fire-arms brought about a reduction 

 in the packs. The primitive matchlock was too un- 

 wieldy to handle and too uncertain in ignition to be 

 relied on in a wolf-hunt, and the wheel-lock was too 

 cumbrous and complicated to be of much use except in 

 defending a fortress. But towards the end of the six- 

 teenth century the Germans devised the snaphaunce, 

 fitted with a flint-lock which, subjected to successive 



