WOLVES. 
210 
be seen by the side of every stream, and a traveller can rarely 
pass the night in these wilds without hearing them howling 
around him.’ These wolves burrow, and bring forth their 
young in earths with several outlets, like those of the fox. Sir 
John saw none with the gaunt appearance, the long jaw and 
tapering nose, long legs and slender feet, of the Pyrenean 
wolves. 
“India, too, is infested with wolves, which are smaller than the 
European. There is a remarkably fine animal at the Zoological 
Gardens, born of a European father and Indian mother, which, 
in size and other respects, so closely partakes of the character- 
istics of his sire, that he might well pass for pure blood.’' 
“ Our English word wolf is derived from the Saxon wulf, and 
from the same root the German wolf the Swedish ulf, and 
Danish ulv, are probably derived. Wolves were at one time a 
great scourge to this country, the dense forests which formerly 
covered the land favouring their safety and their increase. 
Edgar applied himself seriously to rid his subjects of this pest, 
by commuting the punishment of certain crimes into the accep- 
tance of a number of wolves’ tongues from each criminal; and in 
Wales by commuting a tax of gold and silver imposed on the 
Princes of Cambria by Ethelstan, into an annual tribute of three 
hundred wolves’ heads, which Jenaf, Prince of North Wales, 
paid so punctually, that by the fourth year the breed was ex- 
tinct. Not so, however in England, for, like ill weeds, they 
increased and multiplied here, rendering necessary the appoint- 
ment, in the reign of the first Edward, of a wolf-hunter general, 
in the person of one Peter Corbet; and his Majesty thought it 
not beneath his dignity to issue a mandamus, bearing date Ma}' 
14th, 1281, to all Bailiffs &c., to aid and assist the said Peter 
in the destruction of wolves in the counties of Gloucester, Wor- 
cester, Hereford, Shropshire, and Stafford ; and Camden informs 
us that, in Derby, lands were held at Wormhill by the duty of 
hunting and taking the wolves that infested that county. In 
the reign of Athelstan, these pests had so abounded in York- 
shire, that a retreat was built at Flixton in that county, ‘to 
defend passengers from the wolves, that they should not be 
devoured by them.’ Our Saxon ancestors also called January, 
when wolves pair, wolf-moneth ; and an outlaw was termed 
wolfshed, being out of the protection of the law, and as liable to 
be killed as that destructive beast. 
“ A curious notice of the existence of wolves and foxes in 
Scotland is afforded in Bellenden’s translation of Boetius. 
‘The wolffis are right noisome to tame beastial in all parts of 
Scotland, except one part thereof, named Glen morris, in which 
the tame beastial gets little damage of wild beastial, especially of 
