THF WOLF. 177 



county, to defend passengers from the wolves, that they should 

 not be devoured by them ; and such ravages did these animals 

 make during the winter, particularly in January, when the cold 

 was severest, that our Saxon ancestors distinguished that month 

 by the title of wolf-moneth. They also called an outlaw wolfshed, 

 as being out of the protection of the law, proscribed, and as 

 liable to be killed as that destructive beast."* 



Camden says that certain persons at Wormhill, in Derby, 

 held their lands on condition of their pursuing and killing the 

 wolves that infested the country. King Edgar, about the year 

 972, dispensed with the punishment of those persons wha 

 committed certain offences, upon their producing a specified 

 number of wolves' tongues 5 and it is a common notion that 

 they did not inhabit England after his time. But that they 

 existed here for many centuries subsequent to that period, is 

 proved by the records concerning the destruction of wolves in 

 the reigns of King John, Edward the First, and Edward the 

 Third , indeed that they existed later may be inferred from the 

 fact, that the monastic huntress, Juliana Barnes, writing in the 

 time of Henry the Seventh, gives the following instruction ta 

 her pupils : 



" Where so ever ye fare by fryth or by fell, 

 My dere chylde, take hede how Trystam do you tell 

 How many manere bestys of venery there are ; 

 Lysten to your dame, and she shall you lere. 

 Foure manere of bestys of venere there are : 

 The first of them is the harte : the second is the hare : 

 The boare is one of tho : the woolfe and not one mo." 



(The BoU of St. Allans, 1496.) 



Hollinshed says that in Scotland, in the year 1 577, the flocks 

 suffered extensively from the ravages of wolves. The last wolf 

 that inhabited that country is said to have been killed at 

 Lochaber, by Sir Edward Cameron ofLochiel, about the year 

 1677-t Sir Thomas Dick Lauder gives an interesting account 

 of the killing of the last wolves of Moray, the facts of course 



* Pennant's British Zoology (1768), vol. i. p. 63. 



t In the Catalogue of Mr. Donavan's sale of the London Museum by Mr. 

 King, April 1818, lot 832, p. 53, is " a wolf, a noble animal, in a large glazed 

 case. The last wolf killed in Scotland, by Sir E. Cameron." 



N 



