THE EXTINCT BRITISH WOLF. 
265 
The place where the last wolf that infested Monteith was 
killed is a romantic cottage south-west of the mill of Milling, in 
the parish and barony of Port.* * * § 
44 The devastations of Oliver Cromwell in the vast oak and fir 
woods of Lochaber are well known, and in 1848 the old people 
still retained traditions of the native clearances in the same 
century, when the great tracts south of Loch Treig and upon 
the Blackwater were set on fire to exterminate the wolves.”f 
In the Edderachillis district, forming the western portion of 
what is called Lord Reay’s country, a tradition existed to the 
effect that wolves were at one time so numerous that to avoid 
their ravages in disinterring bodies from their graves the inha- 
bitants were obliged to have recourse to the island of Handa as 
a safer place of sepulture.^ 
The Earl of Ellesmere, referring to an extract from the 
journal of his son, the Hon. Capt. Francis Egerton, R.N., 
written in India, and relating to an apparently well authenti- 
cated story of some children in Oude who were carried away 
and brought up by wolves, § says : 64 It is odd that the same tale 
should extend to the Highlands. I got a story identical in all 
its particulars of the wolf time of Sutherland from the old 
forester of the Reay, in which district Gaelic tradition avers 
that wolves so abounded that it was usual to bury the dead in 
the Island of Handa to avoid desecration of the graves.” 
In like manner an island in Loch Maree, Ross-shire, was for 
the same reason selected for a similar purpose. || 
On the western shores of Argyleshire the small isle of St. 
Mungo, still used as a burial place, has been appropriated to 
this purpose from the days when the wolves were the terror of 
the land, the passage between it and the mainland opposing a 
barrier which they in vain attempted to cross.lf 
In Athole it was formerly the custom to bury the dead in 
coffins made of five flagstones to preserve the bodies from 
wolves.* * 
When treating of the wolf in England it was observed that 
many names of places compounded of 44 wolf” indicate in all pro- 
bability localities where this animal was at one time common. 
The same may be said of Scotland. Chalmers cites in Rox- 
* Nimmo’s “ Stirlingshire,” pp. 745, 750. 
t Stuart, “ Lays of the Deer Forest,” ii. p. 221. 
X Wilson’s “ Voyage round Scotland,” Vol. i. p. 346. 
§ “ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,” 2nd series, viii. p. 153. 
|| Macculloch’s “ Western Isles,” quoted in Chambers’ “ Gazetteer of Scot- 
land,” p. 755. 
II Constable’s “ Edinb. Mag.,” Nov. 1817, p. 340. 
* * " Statistical Account of Scotland” (1792), Vol. ii. p. 465. 
