safety and their increase. Edgar applied himself seriously to rid
his subjects of this pest, by commuting the punishment of certain crimes
into the acceptance 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 extinct. Not so, however, in
England, for like ill weeds, they increased and multiplied here,
rendering necessary the appointment, 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 May 14th, 1281, to all bailiffs, &c., to aid and assist the said
Peter in the destruction of wolves in the counties of Gloucester,
Worcester, 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 Yorkshire, 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.[3] "The wolffis are
right noisome to tame beastial in all parts of Scotland, except one part
thereof, named Glenmorris, in which the tame beastial gets little damage
of wild beastial, especially of tods (foxes); for each house nurses a
young tod certain days, and mengis (mixes) the flesh thereof, after it
be slain, with such meat as they give to their fowls or other small
beasts, and so many as eat of this meat are preserved two months after
from any damage of tods; for tods will eat no flesh that gusts of their
own kind." The last wolf killed in Scotland is said to have fallen by
the hand of Sir Ewen Cameron, about 1680; and singular to say, the skin
of this venerable quadruped may yet be in existence: in a catalogue of
Mr. Donnovan's sale of the London Museum, in April, 1818, there occurs
the following item, "Lot 832. Wolf, a noble animal