EXTINCT BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. 285 
Park, Staffordshire, and in Derbyshire; but none of these 
attempts resulted in the re-establishment of the species in 
England, much to the satisfaction probably of all but the few 
enthusiastic sportsmen who were bold enough to make the experi- 
ments referred to. 
We come now to the Wolf, which was the last to disappear of 
those animals which are now extinct in the British Islands, 
and on this account partly the materials for its history as a 
British animal are more complete than is the case with any of 
the others. 
The researches of geologists have brought to light its fossil 
remains in various parts of the country, and it is evident that at 
one time there was perhaps scarcely a county in England and 
Wales in which Wolves did not abound, while in Scotland and 
Treland they must have been even still more numerous. 
The vast tracts of unreclaimed forest land which formerly 
existed in these realms, the magnificent remnants of which in 
many parts still strike the beholder with awe and admiration, 
afforded for centuries an impenetrable retreat for these animals, 
from which it was well-nigh impossible to drive them. It was not 
indeed until all legitimate modes of hunting and trapping had 
proved in vain, until large prices set upon the heads of old and 
young had alike failed to compass their entire destruction, that by 
cutting down and burning whole tracts of the forests which 
harboured them, they were at length effectually extirpated. 
It is currently believed that in England the Wolf was com- 
pletely exterminated by King Edgar, who, by relinquishing the 
fine of gold and silver imposed upon the Welsh princes by his 
uncle Athelstane after the battle of Brunanburgh, in 938, and 
exacting in its stead the annual production of 300 Wolf skins, is 
said to have killed them all off in four years. But this, if true,* 
must be taken to apply only to Wales, not only because the Welsh 
chieftains had no authority to hunt out of their own dominions, 
but because there is abundant documentary evidence to prove 
that Wolves existed in England for at least’ five hundred years 
later, while in Scotland and Ireland, as we shall presently see, 
they survived even to a still later date. 
* Owen, in his ‘ Cambrian Biography,’ states that it was not until forty- 
five years after the edict of Edgar that the last Welsh Wolf was slain. 
