432 



NATURE 



{March lo, 1881 



season with boar-fights, or bull- and bear-baiting. A 

 grand exhibition of bear-baiting took place at Hatfield 

 House when Queen Mary visited her sister, the Princess 

 Elizabeth, during her confinement there, "with which 

 their Highnesses were right well content." Soon after 

 the ascension of the latter to the throne she entertained 

 the Spanish ambassadors with bulls and bears, and some 

 years afterwards she received the Danish ambassador at 

 Greenwich, and entertained him with bear-baiting, 

 " tempered with other merry disports." On one occa- 

 sion at KeniUorth no less than thirteen bears were 

 baited before the queen with large ban-dogs. From these 

 notices it is evident that Queen Elizabeth was very fond 

 of this sport. Some of the great nobles and ecclesiastics 

 also kept bears and bear-wards. Latterly there were 

 travelling bear-wards dependent upon their patrons. The 

 bear was probably extinct in Britain about the time of 

 the Norman Conquest, and is not known to have existed 

 in Ireland within the historic period. 



The wolf abounded in Britain in the Pleistocene and 

 prehistoric periods, and varied in numbers in the historic 

 age in proportion to the waste lands. It was a subject of 

 many legal enactments, and grants of land were held for 

 its capture. To the numerous references which Mr. 

 Harting gives we may add an extract from the Litany of 

 Dunkeld current in Scotland in the eleventh or twelfth 

 century : " A cateranis et latronibus, a lupis et omni mala 

 bestia, Domine, libera nosi" 



The animal had a price set upon its head by statute in 

 1621; the price paid for one wolf in Sutherlandshire was 

 six pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence. In Ireland, 

 in 1683, "for every bitch wolfe the price was six pounds, 

 for every dog wolfe five pounds, for every cubb which 

 preyeth for himself forty shillings, and for every suckling 

 cubb ten shillings." It is obvious from these large 

 prices that the wolt was becoming rare in Scotland and 

 Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. The 

 last of the British wolves was killed in Scotland in 1743 

 by Mac Queen, a man remarkable for his stature and 

 courage, who died in the year 1797. The memory of the 

 exploit is still preserved by tradition. In Ireland the 

 animal lingered until 1770. Mr. Harting deserves great 

 credit for having collected together the evidence by which 

 these dates can be fixed. The wolf became extinct in 

 England in the reign of Henry VII. 



The wild boar still lingered in Lancashire in 161 7, and 

 the last notice of the animal in the south of England is of 

 the hunting of the wild boar at Windsor by James I. and 

 his court. Mr. Harting considers that an entry in an 

 account book of the steward of the manor of Cbartley 

 " 1683. — February. Pd. the cooper for a paile for ye wild 

 swine, 0.2. 0.," proves that it was not extinct in England 

 at that date. It seems however to us very unlikely that 

 wild boars would have such attention paid to their wants 

 and more probable that they were domestic swine turned 

 out into the woodlands to get the greater part of their 

 own living. 



The reindeer, so abundant in the late Pleistocene age, 

 and so generally found along with Palaeolithic implements, 

 and so strangely associated with the remains of hippo- 

 potamus in the hya;na-dens of this country (a fact which 

 proves the two animals to have been contemporaneous)^ 

 was rare in the prehistoric period, and disappeared alto- 



gether from its last foothold in Caithness about the latter 

 half of the thirteenth century. We may remark that the 

 recent attempts to introduce the animal into Switzerland 

 have failed, apparently from the great heat of summer. 



The beaver was living in the River Teivl, according to 

 Girald du Barry, in 1 159 ; and, according to Boethius, was 

 taken in Locbness for the sake of its fur towards the end 

 of the fifteenth century. We would call the attention of 

 our readers to the remarkably interesting account of its 

 reintroduction by the Marquis into the Island of Bute, 

 where they are now increasing rapidly and building their 

 dams. There is evidently no difficulty in naturalising 

 them in this country. 



We close this review regretting that it is impossible to 

 do justice to the careful account of the different breeds of 

 the "wild white cattle," which we believe to be the 

 descendants of the domestic cattle introduced by the 

 English, and which have always lived in uninclosed 

 lands. W. Boyd Dawkins 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Notes of Observations of Injtirious Insects. Report, 

 1S80. By Eleanor A. Ormerod. Svo. pp. 1-48. 

 (London : W. Swan Sonnenschein and Allen. Edin- 

 burgh : J, Menzies, 1881.) 



Miss Ormerod and her assistants are to be congratu- 

 lated on this very excellent Report, which is far more 

 bulky than its predecessors, and correspondingly useful 

 and interesting, and well illustrated. At the outset 

 a very significant fact is mentioned. The season 

 of 1880 was remarkably suitable for vegetation, and the 

 attacks of insects consequently less severe ; a high condi- 

 tion of vitality enabled the plants to more successfully 

 cope with their insect enemies. The most injurious 

 species for the year was the well-known larva of Tipula 

 (daddy-long-legs), which not only attacked its more 

 usual food, the roots of grasses, laut proved itself ex- 

 tremely injurious to peas, so that in one field of twenty 

 acres the prospective value in March was reduced to a 

 realised value of only about one half in June ; other 

 crops were also attacked. Stimulating remedies, such 

 as guano, salt, ammoniacal liquor, &c., had a good effect, 

 but the giubs appeared to be remarkably indifferent 

 to ordinary poisonous solutions. An experiment at the 

 Kew Observatory as to the amount of cold they can endure 

 showed that some survived 42° of frost. Another \exy 

 injurious species was Tcpliritis onopo7'dinis (the celery-fly) ; 

 a dressing of gas-lime, unslaked hme, and soot had a good 

 effect. The singularly misnamed Psila rosce (the carrot 

 fly) was also obnoxious ; sowing the seeds in a mixture 

 of leaf-mould, ashes, &c., proved of excellent service in 

 this case. Sitones lincatiis was very injurious to peas. 

 We think Miss Ormerod acts injudiciously in calling this 

 insect the "pea- weevil." Its larva is certainly very much 

 given to attacking peas and many other plants, by eating 

 the young shoots, but the true pea-weevil is Bruclius pisi, 

 which destroys the peas themselves by feeding inside them. 

 For the gooseberry saw-fly nothing proved so efl'ectual as 

 digging out the earth round the bushes when the larvse 

 and pups are underground, the removed portion being 

 taken away and burnt ; a suggestion that if pieces of 

 woollen cloth be placed on the bushes the parent fly will 

 deposit her eggs thereon seems far-fetched. Miss Or- 

 merod has great faith in the efficacy of paraffine. In 

 future it is proposed to extend the Report to insects not 

 hitherto specially mentioned as desirable for observation, 

 such as the larch-aphis and pine saw-fly. We are glad 

 to note that the authoress has a Manual of Economic 

 Entomology in the press. 



