1 66 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



dome, sith they have greevous Woolfes and cruell 

 foxes, beside some other of like disposition con- 

 tinuallie conversant among them, to the general 

 hindrance of their husbandmen and no small damage 

 unto the inhabiters of those quarters."* 



William Barclay, who was a native of Aberdeen- 

 shire, and spent the early part of his life at the Court 

 of Queen Mary, accompanied her Majesty on an 

 excursion to the Highlands, and has left a curious 

 accountf of a royal hunt at which he was present, 

 and which was organized for the Queen by John, 

 fourth Earl of Athole, in 1 563. Two thousand High- 

 landers were employed to drive all the deer from 

 the woods and hills of Athole, Badenach, Mar, 

 Moray, and the surrounding; country. After men- 

 tioning incidentally that the Queen ordered one of 

 the fiercest dogs to be slipped at a Wolf — " Laxatus 

 enim regince jussu, atque immissus in lupum, insignis 

 admodum ac ferox canis " — Barclay concludes his 

 account of the "drive" with the statement that 

 there were killed that very day 360 deer, 5 Wolves, 

 and some roes. 



According to Holinshed, Wolves were very de- 

 structive to the flocks in Scotland during the reign 

 of James VI. in 1577- At this time they were so 

 numerous throughout the greater part of the High- 

 lands, that in the winter it was necessary to provide 

 houses, or " spittals " as they were termed, to afford 



* Harrison's "Description of England," prefixed to Holinshed's 

 " Chronicles," i. p. 378. 

 f "De Kegno et regali Potestate," &c, 4to, 1600, p. 279. 



