Lesley, from five hundred to
a thousand were sometimes slain at a hunting match; but the native races
would already have been extinguished, had they not been carefully
preserved in certain forests. The otter, the marten, and the polecat,
were also in sufficient numbers to be pursued for the sake of their fur;
but they have now been reduced within very narrow bounds. The wild cat
and fox have also been sacrificed throughout the greater part of the
country, for the security of the poultry-yard or the fold. Badgers have
been expelled from nearly every district, which at former periods they
inhabited.

Besides these, which have been driven out from their favorite haunts,
and everywhere reduced in number, there are some which have been wholly
extirpated; such as the ancient breed of indigenous horses, and the wild
boar; of the wild oxen a few remains are still preserved in some of the
old English parks. The beaver, which is eagerly sought after for its
fur, had become scarce at the close of the ninth century; and, by the
twelfth century, was only to be met with, according to Giraldus de
Barri, in one river in Wales, and another in Scotland. The wolf, once so
much dreaded by our ancestors, is said to have maintained its ground in
Ireland so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century (1710),
though it had been extirpated in Scotland thirty years before, and in
England at a much earlier period. The bear, which, in Wales, was
regarded as a beast of the chase equal to the hare or the boar[969],
only perished, as a native of Scotland, in the year 1057.[970]

Many native birds of prey have also been the subjects of unremitting
persecution. The eagles, larger hawks, and ravens, have disappeared from
the more cultivated districts. The haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the
redshank, and the bittern, have been drained equally with the summer
dwellings of the lapwing and the curlew. But these species still linger
in some portion of the British isles; whereas the larger capercailzies
or wood grouse, formerly natives of the pine-forests of Ireland and
Scotland, have been destroyed within the last sixty years. The egret and
the crane, which appear to have been formerly very common in Scotland,
are now only occasional visitants.[971]

The bustard (_Otis tarda_), observes Graves, in his British
Ornithology[972], "was formerly seen in the downs and heaths of various
parts of our island, in flocks of forty or fifty birds; whereas it is