NOTES AND QUERIES. 307 



several of the older dictionaries, as those of Delpino (1763), Pinedos (1740), 

 and Stevens (1724), expressly explain lebrel to be "An Irish greyhound, 

 though some will use it for a common greyhound, which is not proper, 

 these being called galgos." Commenting upon the derivation of the word 

 loup-garou (were-wolf) given by the Abbe Espagnolle, in his remarkable 

 work 'L'Origine du Francais,' 1888, vol.ii. p. 292, Prof. O'Reilly remarks: — 

 11 Comparing the form loup-brou = leu-brou with the Portuguese lebreo = 

 lebre = Spanish lebrel, it may be taken that the word lebrel originally 

 meant a lynx, or loup-cervier. Hence the perro lebrel mentioned by Bowles 

 would really mean a wolf-dog." The pith of his communication is to be 

 found in the following quotation from Bowles, who, an Irishman by birth, 

 spent many years in Spain, and died in Madrid at an advanced age in 

 1780; — " The ordinary wolves (lobos comunes) are rare, either because there 

 are but few small cattle, or because — the whole country being covered with 

 farms (caserias) — should one be seen he is at once hunted and killed, for 

 which work are excellent the greyhounds which they have brought here from 

 Ireland — para lo qual son excellentes los perros lebreles que hay alii trahidos 

 de lrlanda." Prof. O'Reilly concludes: — "Taking for granted that there 

 was an importation of Irish wolf-dogs in Spain during the seventeenth and 

 commencement of the eighteenth centuries, it would be reasonable to presume 

 that the race of these dogs may still be surviving in Biscay, or other parts 

 of the Pyrennees where wolves still exist, and the climate of this moun- 

 tainous district would not materially tend to the degeneration of the race." 

 I may add that there is evidence of Irish wolf-hounds having been sent to 

 Spain prior to the seventeenth century. In 1545, as I have pointed out in 

 an article on the subject (Essays and Reviews, p. 62), Henry VIII., at the 

 request of the Spanish Duke of Alburquerque on behalf of the Marquis 

 Desarya and his son, ordered the delivery to them out of Ireland of two 

 goshawks and four greyhounds yearly, the cost of which was to be defrayed 

 by the Treasury. — J. E. Harting. 



Destruction of Otters in the Thames.— Some correspondence on this 

 subject has been printed lately in the ' South Bucks Standard,' and a letter 

 from our contributor, Mr. A. H. Cocks, which appeared in the issue for 

 June 20th, is so much to the point that we are glad to give it a wider 

 circulation by reprinting it here. Mr. Cocks writes : — " In common, no 

 doubt, with a large number of your readers, I was very glad to see the letter 

 in your last issue, signed ' Another Marlow Sportsman,' protesting against 

 the senseless persecution of the Otters. As one who has kept live Otters, 

 tame and wild, for more than twenty-one years — without a break for the 

 last seventeen and a quarter — sometimes having several specimens in my 

 possession at once, and who has observed their habits pretty closely in a 

 wild state as well, I may claim to speak with a certain amount of authority 

 about them ; and I assert with confidence that they do very little harm to 



