THE WOLF IN EUROPE

Evening Star, Issue 19805, 2 March 1928, Page 14

THE WOLF IN EUROPE

DEPREDATIONS IN SLOVAKIA THE PROCESS Ok EXTERMINATION. As is usual in severe winters, reports were numerous about Christmas time of wolves invading villages in Central Europe, anil even causing loss of life. " The wolf is a savago boast when hungry,” a. natural history authority said, in commenting on these reports to a representative of the ‘ Observer,’ and will attack not only farm animals and children, but man as well. A severe winter like tins deprives him of Jus ordinary food, and he goes into Ibe viljages lo get what lie can. Only a century ago, during, spells of very snowy weather, wolves appeared in Uio slrcois of Paris.

"To-day they have become scarce in France, but they are. still fairly numerous in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe, in spite both of the extension of agriculture to districts hitherto uncultivated and the relentless warfare that is carried on against them wherever' they make their appearance. In Russia, in the days of the Tsars, they used to be regularly hunted, but tin's practice has probably died out with the old nobility, who maintained a special breed of bounds for the purpose. "Jt is extremely doubtful whether anyone still living has heard of wolves in any part of Groat Britain, though there arc stories, never, however, quite definitely authenticated, of the survival of the animal in the wildest parts of Scotland and Ire. land until almost the middle of Hie nineteenth century.

" In England and Wales the wolf became practically extinct about the cud of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, its last retreats being Hie forests of Lancashire and tho wolds of Yorkshire. The early Saxon kings, it will bo recalled, exacted from their brothers of Wales an annual tribute of 300 wolf skins, and the yearly slaughter, though it may not, as some historians appear to think, have destroyed the whole of the animals in Wales anil on the Welsh borders, would certainly have had a most valuable effect in keeping down and steadily decreasing their numbers. In Scotland early efforts were also aimed at exterminating tho wolf, though their character seems lo have been loss drastic. It is said, for example, of Dornadilla, a Scottish king, who lived two cenlurics before the Christian era, that to every man who killed a wolf ho gave an ox for his pains. Teh best method of destroying wolves is the use of strychnine, though it has its disadvantages. J. G. Millais, la his work on ’The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland,’ mentions that thirty or forty years ago, when (hey wen; very abundant in Newfoundland, qnanlitios of slryclinino were issued lo the men employed in making the railway, and to the guides and trappers in the districts through which it passed. Hundreds of wolves were, destroyed by this means, and the local species was almost exterminated. Tho method, however, had to be discontinued owing lo Iho destruction it also caused amongst dogs and foxes, whose skins were valuable.”