4 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



plants. Many a traveller then had cause to rue the 

 sudden and unexpected rush of some grand old 

 patriarch of the " sownder," who, with gnashing 

 tusks, charged out upon the invader of his domain, 

 occasionally unhorsing him, and not unfrequently 

 inflicting severe injuries upon his steed. In the 

 wilder recesses of the forest, and amongst the caves 

 and boulders of the mountain side, the bear, too, 

 had his stronghold, and though exterminated at a 

 much earlier period, long co- existed with the animals 

 we have named ; while in a few favoured localities 

 in the west and north, the harmless, inoffensive 

 beaver built its dam, and dived in timid haste at the 

 approach of an intruder. 



At the present day it is difficult to realize such a 

 state of things, unless we consider at the same time 

 the aspect and condition of the country in which 

 these animals lived, and the remarkable physical 

 changes which have since taken place. Nothing 

 we have now left can give us any idea of the 

 state of things then ; not the moors of North 

 Derbyshire, West Yorkshire, and Lancashire, the 

 wUd wastes of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and 

 Northumberland, nor even the extensive deer-forests 

 and moors of the Scottish Highlands ; for the pathless 

 woods which then covered a great part of these dis- 

 tricts are all gone, and so also are the thick forests 

 which, outside of but connected with them, skirted 

 these higher grounds. The advance of man and the 

 progress of cultivation has destroyed most of these 

 wUd woods, but it was not so in late Saxon and in 



