EXTERMINATED ANIMALS. 43 



length, discover the mechanism of the earth, and the 

 grand problem regarding the formation of the world 

 may be, one day, solved. 



Though the wild deer is now the only remarkable 

 animal of the chase among the mountains of Great 

 Britain, yet the bear and the wolf have had their dens 

 in common with other beasts of prey, now only found 

 in other countries. The brown bear (ursus arctus) 

 which is still formidable in more northern regions, and 

 even in Germany and France, once infested this country. 

 Those animals were so powerful in the days of the 

 Romans that (as Plutarch informs us) they were trans- 

 ported to Rome ; and though the efforts to exterminate 

 them were unceasing, and their destruction was ac- 

 counted one of the noblest triumphs of the daring, yet 

 they appear to have held their place till a much later 

 period. Tradition says, that in the year 1057, a Gordon 

 vanquished so fierce a bear that he was permitted to 

 wear three bear's heads in the quarterings of his arms 

 as an achievement of honour. The tradition may not 

 be literally true ; but the very existence of the tradition 

 is a proof of that of the animal. It is corroborated too 

 by many circumstances connected with the honours of 

 families in Wales and Scotland, where pedigree and 

 tradition reach much further back, and are much more 

 full and circumstantial in their details, than in England. 

 " Beware the bear," though allegorical in the case 

 of the " Baron of Braidwardine," was often a real note 

 of precaution in the forest-hunts of both ends of the 

 island ; and, probably, notwithstanding the zeal and 

 ardour with which both the bear and the wolf are said 

 to have been hunted, their extirpation in the remote 



