1350 The Zoologist — September, 1868. 



absolute master of the position. In 1281 wolves had become so 

 numerous and so formidable that the Kelt was compelled to hide his 

 head entirely by night, and crept about by day in fear and trembling. 

 We learn from Hollingshed that in 1577, three hundred years later, 

 and after Saxon blood had been infused into Scotland, that the wolf 

 was still troublesome, and subsequent history shows that the last wolf 

 was slain in Scotland by Sir Evan Cameron in 1678. In Ireland he 

 continued still longer a terror and devastating plague to the Kelt. It 

 is very familiar to readers of history that Ireland was never completely 

 conquered by the Caucasian ; the feeble Kelt, the rightful owner of the 

 soil, was never thoroughly extirpated as he has been in England ; the 

 Saxon crossed the Channel, having his own ends in view, and found 

 two occupants equally opposed to him. Considerations, whether 

 political, moral or religious, we need not consider, induced him to 

 spare the Kelt, but the wolf enjoyed no such immunity. To the Kelt 

 the wolf had been a terror and held in abject dread ; to the Saxon he 

 was simply a nuisance, and so was destroyed. Nevertheless, owing to 

 the numerical preponderance of the Kelt, the task of destruction was 

 very gradual, and the wolf held his own much longer than in Scotland, 

 where the native, with a shrewd eye to self-interest, amalgamated 

 with the Saxon, and availed himself of that powerful arm. It was not 

 until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the wolf was exter- 

 minated in Ireland. 



Of these four animals, two were important from their destructive 

 powers, one from its value as human food, and one from its mercantile 

 value in human clothing; yet they have so totally vanished that' few 

 amongst us have ever regarded them but as the inhabitants of other 

 climes. They perished immediately they were brought into close con- 

 tact with the favoured race of man ; and this is no more than an indica- 

 tion of the future: wherever the Saxon shall come into close contact 

 with the bear, the beaver, the wild boar or the wolf, these beasts will in- 

 evitably perish : on the continent of Europe they are for the moment 

 protected only by the expanse of territory. It may here also be men- 

 tioned that the king of beasts, the lion himself, was once an inhabitant 

 of Europe, although now exclusively Asiatic or African. 



Let us now turn back to another page in the records of the past. 

 Authentic history not only takes abundant cognizance of, but gives us 

 every desired detail respecting species that are now absolutely dead. 

 The few examples of which I have collected and arranged obituary 



