THE WOLF. 175 



and being on her way home, she sat down upon an old 

 earn to rest and gossip With a neighbour, when sud- 

 denly a scraping of stones and rustling of dead leaves 

 were heard, and the head of a Wolf protruded from a 

 crevice at her side. Instead of fleeing in alarm, how- 

 ever, " she dealt him such a blow on the skull with 

 the full swing of her iron discus, that it brained him 

 on the stone which served for his emerging head." 



This tradition was probably one of the latest in the 

 district, and seems to have belonged to a period 

 when the Wolves were near their end. Their last 

 great outbreak in the time of Queen Mary led to 

 more vigorous measures, which in the time of 

 Charles II. reduced their ranks to so small a number 

 that in some districts their extinction is believed to 

 have followed soon after that period. Thus, in 

 Lochaber, the last in that part of the country is said 

 to have been killed by Sir Ewen Cameron in 1680, 

 which Pennant misunderstood to have been the last 

 of the species in Scotland.* 



Some traditionary notices there are of the destruc- 

 tion of the last Wolves seen in Sutherlandshire, 

 consisting of four old ones and some whelps which 

 were killed about the same time at three different 

 places, — at Auchumore in Assynt, in Halladale, and 

 in Glen Loth— widely distant from each other, and 

 as late as between the years 1690 and 1700. 



The death of the last Wolf and her cubs on the 



* In the Sale Catalogue of the " London Museum" which was 

 disposed of by auction in April, 1818, there is the following entry: 

 ■' Lot 832. "Wolf — a noble animal in a large glass case. The last Wolf 

 killed in Scotland by Sir E. Cameron." 



