INTRODUCTION. 9 



As for Scotland, we can scarcely over-estimate the 

 wildness that everywhere prevailed, when in the 

 south a vast forest filled the intervening space 

 between Chillingham and Hamilton, a distance, as 

 the crow flies, of about eighty miles, including within 

 it Ettrick and numerous other forests ;* and further 

 north the great Caledonian wood, known even at 

 Rome, covered the greater part of both the Low- 

 lands and Highlands, its recesses afibrding shelter at 

 one time to bears, wolves, wUd-boars, and wild white 

 ■cattle. 



Enough, perhaps, has been here advanced to show 

 that the whole of this immense range of mountains 

 and hiUs, with its vast forests and wastes, was as 

 favourable a tract of country for the preservation of 

 aboriginal wild animals as could well be conceived ; 

 but for further details of the situation and former 

 extent of English forests the reader may be referred 

 to Whitaker's "History of Manchester" (Bk. I. 

 P- 337) j Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" (vol. ii.), to 

 which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in his edition 

 (1834) has made some valuable additions; Scrope's 

 ^'Art of Deer Stalking" (3rd ed. 1847); and Mr. 

 Evelyn Shirley's "EngUsh Deer Parks" (1867). 



To describe the various modes of hunting in these 

 .early times would be beside the purpose of the present 

 work, which is, rather, to collect together evidence, 

 geological and historical, of the former existence here 

 of certain wUd animals which have become extinct 

 within historic times. On the subject of hunting, 



* Storer, p. 68. 



