He was suc died at a very advanced age in 1793. ceeded by his nephew, the Very Reverend Holt Waring, Dean of Dromore, who was born in 1766, and whom I had the honour to know. With him I happened to be travelling through the Mourne mountains, in the county of Down, on our way to the Earl of Roden's, about the year 1834 or 1835, when the conversation turning upon the social condition of Ireland in the previous century, he told me that a foal belonging to his uncle had been killed by a Wolf in the stable at Waringstown, and that he, when a boy, had heard the occurrence repeatedly adverted to in the family circle. The dean was a man of singularly acute mind and accurate memory, and unless this statement of his be altogether a delusion, this would seem to be the last recorded appearance of a Wolf in Ireland." The last piece of evidence collected has reference to a communication which appeared in The Zoologist for 1862 (p. 7996), under the heading, "Wolf Days of Ireland." On applying to the writer, Mr. Jonathan Grubb, of Sudbury, for further particulars, he obligingly replied in a letter, dated June 6, 1877, as follows:-- "I am now in my seventieth year. My father, who was born in 1767, used to tell the Wolf stories to us when we were children. His mother-my grandmother-related them to him. She was born in 1731. Her maiden name was Malone; and her uncles, from whom she received her information, were the actors in the scenes described at Ballyroggin, county Kildare. She remembered one of them, James Malone, telling her how his brother came home one night on horseback pursued by a pack of Wolves, who overtook him, and continued leaping on to the hind quarters of his horse till he reached his own door, crying out, Oh! James, James! my horse is ate with the Wolves."" The precise date of this occurrence cannot now be fixed; but it seems plain that Wolves existed in Kildare during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and perhaps as late as 1721. To sum up. So far as can be now ascertained, it appears that the Wolf became extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII.; that it survived in Scotland until 1743; and that the last of these animals was killed in Ireland, according to Richardson, in 1770, or, according to Sir James Emerson Tennent, subsequently to 1766. In the foregoing observations, no reference has been made to "Were-wolves," nor has any matter been introduced touching the fabulous or superstitious aspect of the Wolf's history in the British Islands. All such allusions have been purposely avoided, in order to confine the subject within reasonable limits. Before concluding, however, we may perhaps be excused for citing so respectable an authority as Sir Thomas Browne, who, in his "Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors," has alluded to the popular notion that Wolves cannot live in England. In vol. iii. p. 344, of his "Works" (Wilkin's edition), he says:-"Thus because there are no Wolves in England, nor have been observed for divers generations (1646), common people have proceeded into opinions, and some wise men into affirmations, that they will not live therein, although brought from other countries." He also notices the popular belief that "a Wolf first seeing a man begets a dumbness in him," a notion as old as the time of Pliny, who wrote: "In Italia, ut creditur, luporum visus est noxius, vocemque homini, quem prius contemplatur adimere." In France, when anyone becomes hoarse, the say "Il a vu le loup."* "The ground or occasional original thereof," says Sir Thomas Browne,† "was probably the amazement and sudden silence the unexpected appearance of Wolves doth often put upon travellers, not by a supposed vapour or venomous emanation, but a vehement fear, which naturally produceth obmutescence, and sometimes irrecoverable silence." A critic, adverting to this passage, has somewhat wittily remarked: "Dr. Browne did unadvisedly reckon this among his vulgar errors, for I believe he would find this no error if he were suddenly surprised by a wolf, having no means to escape or save himself! Howell's "Familiar Letters," vol. ii. p. 52. CONCLUSION. Is considering the causes, besides those already referred to, which have led to the extinction of the wild animals now under consideration, it should be borne in mind that for some centuries after the Norman Conquest they were not hunted down and destroyed by everybody and anybody, as they would be if they existed at the present day, but were strictly preserved under very severe penalties by the kings and powerful noblemen of the day for their own particular sport and recreation. William the Conqueror punished with the loss of eyes those convicted of killing a wild boar, stag, or roebuck; and wolves and foxes, although reckoned neither as beasts of the forest nor of venery, could not be killed within the limits of the forest without a breach of the royal chase, for which offenders had to yield a recompense. The inveterate love of the chase possessed by William Rufus, which prompted him to enforce during his tragical reign the most stringent and cruel forest laws, is too well-known to readers of history to require comment. In his passion for hunting wild animals Henry I. excelled even his brother William, and not content with encountering and slaying those which like the wolf and the wild boar, were at that time indigenous to this country, he "cherished of set purpose sundrie kinds of wild beasts, as bears, libards, ounces, lions, at Woodstocke, and one or two other places in England, which he walled about with hard stone (A.D. 1120), and where he would often fight with some one of them hand to hand." Henry II. and John were both great preservers of wild animals, and monopolized large tracts of country wherein to indulge their passion for hunting. Ferocious animals were in consequence long suffered to remain at large against the will of the people, and hence survived to a much later period in this country than would have been the case had the subjects of these monarchs dared sooner to assert their independence. But at length came the repeal of the forest laws. The operation of the Charter of the Forests, which was signed by John at the same time with Magna Charta, restrained the worst abuses of the feudal tenure; all lands which had been converted into woods or parks since the commencement of this reign were disafforested, and the tenants bordering on the royal forests secured against spoliation; in a word, the laws made for the protection of the game and wild animals were either partially repealed or considerably mitigated. A confirmation of this charter was obtained, though with much difficulty, from Henry III. It |