THE EXTINCT BRITISH WOLF. 
261 
(a thick circular plate of iron, with an iron loop handle at one 
side for lifting, and used for baking bread). Having procured 
it, and being on her way home, she sat down upon an old earn 
to rest and gossip with a neighbour, when suddenly a scraping 
of stones and rustling of dead leaves was heard, and the head of 
a wolf protruded from a crevice at her side. Instead of fleeing 
in alarm, however, u 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 destruction 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 eastern coast 
of Sutherlandshire, says Scrope, was attended with remarkable 
circumstances. 
“ A man named Poison, of Wester Helmsdale, accompanied by 
two lads, one of them his son and the other an active herdboy, 
tracked a wolf to a rocky mountain gully which forms the 
channel of the burn of Sledale in Glen Loth. Here he disco- 
vered a narrow fissure in the midst of large fragments of rock, 
which led apparently to a larger opening or cavern below, 
which the wolf might use as his den. The two lads contrived 
to squeeze themselves through the fissure to examine the 
interior, whilst Poison kept guard on the outside. 
(i The boys descended through the narrow passage into a small 
cavern, which was evidently a wolfs den, for the ground was 
covered with bones and horns of animals, feathers, and eggshells, 
and the dark space was somewhat enlivened by five or six active 
wolf cubs. Poison desired them to destroy these ; and soon 
* 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.” 
