BRITISH BEARS AND WOLVES. 
253 
the general extirpation of the wolf in 1710 may be directly 
assigned : u And it is further ordered that all such person or 
persons who shall take, kill, or destroy any wolfes, and shall 
bring forth the head of the woulfe before the said commanders 
of the revenue, shall receive the sums following, viz. : for every 
bitch wolfe, six pounds ; for every dogg wolfe, five pounds ; for 
every cubb which preyeth for himself, forty shillings ; for 
every suckling cubb, ten shillings ; and no woolfe, after the 
last of September until the 10th of January, be accounted a 
young woolfe ; and the Commissioners of the Revenue shall 
cause the same to be equallie assessed within their precincts.’ 
Such is the history of the British wolf. The date of its 
disappearance from England, Scotland, and Ireland affords 
a clue to the physical condition of those countries at the time. 
The hunter destroyed the only carnivores formidable to the 
shepherd and husbandman in England before the close of the 
fourteenth century; in Scotland in 1686, and in Ireland in 
1710 ; and the two survivors — the bear and wolf — of the band 
of larger beasts of prey that dwelt here in the post-glacial age, 
finally disappeared from Great Britain and Ireland. 
