DESTRUCTION FOR SAFETY OF MAN AND STOCK 115 



pronunciation of Boar, which was "Bare." It is highly 

 probable that a similar confusion of terms led Col. Thornton 

 to state in 1804 that Lord Graham had turned out a few 

 "wild Bears" on the island of Inchmurrin in Loch Lomond, 

 and that the record of Inchmurrin Bears which has found its 

 way into literature is a false one. All that we can say, 

 therefore, is that the Brown Bear seems to have been 

 present in Scotland after the early centuries of our era, and 

 may have existed till the ninth or tenth. Since there were 

 no changes in climate or food supply sufficient to account 

 for its disappearance, the assumption is that man's inter- 

 ference led to its extermination. 



THE WOLF 



Of all the great beasts of prey which harassed man in 

 Scotland, the most troublesome was the Wolf (Canis htpiis] 

 (Fig. 28, p. 1 17), which long survived its associates, the Lynx 

 and the Brown Bear. Many bones attributed to Wolves have 

 been found in early settlements, from the Neolithic cave- 

 dwellings of Ayrshire to the times of the brochs and of 

 kitchen-middens of later date, as well as in rock fissures such 

 as that on the Pentland Hills. Yet the story of the Wolf in 

 prehistoric Scotland is an obscure one. For although an odd 

 relic, such as a jaw bone I have examined from a deposit in 

 Ayrshire, probably indicates the presence of the Wolf in the 

 land before the arrival of man, the bones of later ages are 

 apt to be confused with those of domesticated dogs, brought 

 with them by the early Neolithic peoples during their north- 

 ward wanderings. 



Fortunately the obscurity of this period in the Wolf's 

 history in Scotland is of little real significance, since actual 

 remains found in a dozen and more widely scattered English 

 and Welsh counties, show how general its distribution 

 must have been, and the abundant historical evidence of its 

 presence in Scotland in much later times, gives good ground 

 for supposing that in prehistoric days also, it was a common 

 denizen of the woods. 



It is impossible here to give in detail the recorded his- 

 tory of the Wolf in Scotland from the legendary times when 

 Dorvadilla, the fourth king of the Scots, who, according 



