Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/593

 10* s. ii. DEC. 17, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

489

If Mr. Watling is dead, can any reader give exact information as to the dates of his birth and death and his place of interment, with a copy of his tombstone inscription 1 He was one of those painstaking local antiquaries to whom we owe much.

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A. Lancaster.

BULWER LYTTON'S NOVELS. I am reading the novels of Bulwer Lytton, and am at present engaged upon 'The Parisians.' I cannot be sure which characters are historica and which fictitious. Is there any book that will enable me to solve my difficulty 1

M. MORRIS.

HERBERT KNOWLES. In the recently pub- lished 'History of British Poetry,' by the Rev. F. St. John Corbett, Canterbury is credited with being the birthplace of Herbert Knowles. I have always understood that he was a native of Yorkshire, and should be glad if any of your correspondents could give definite information on the subject.

POETICUS.

Burton-on-Trent.

[The 'D.N.B.' states that Knowles was born at Gomersal, near Leeds, in 1798.]

BEARS AND BOARS IN BRITAIN.

(10 th S. ii. 248.)

THERE is proof of bears having infested Scotland so late as 1057, when a Gordon, in reward for his valour in killing a very fierce one, was directed by the king to carry three bears' heads on his banner ('Hist, of the Gordons,' i. 2, quoted in Thomas Pennant's 'British Zoology,' 1812, vol. i. pp. 90-2). But long after the bear became extinct in this country, he lingered in Scotland, and his scarcity in England was supplied, for baiting purposes, by importations, probably from France. Camden in his 'Britannia,' 1722, vol. ii., says: "I have offered some Argu- ments to prove also that Bears were hereto- fore natives of. this Island, which may be seen in Mr. Ray's 'Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum,' p. 213." Martial says that the Caledonian bears were used to heighten the torments of those who suffered on the cross ; and Plutarch relates that bears were transported from Britain to Rome, where they were held in great admiration (Camden, vol. ii. p. 1227}. But of late years evidence has been adduced of the still remoter existence of the bear in Britain. A complete skeleton of a cave-bear may be seen in the Department of Geology and

Palaeontology in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington ; and the remains of the cave-bear found in Kent's Cavern, in a limestone hill on the south coast of Devon, may be seen in the fourth shelf of Cases 121-2, representing the Palseolithic age. Remains of Ursus spelceus have also been found in the Brixham Cave, Devonshire; Kirkdale Cave, Yorkshire ; Victoria Cave, Settle ; and in very many other localities.

The precise epoch at which the wild boar was extirpated in England is unknown (W. B. Carpenter's 'Zoology,' 1857, vol. i. par. 297). Fitzstephen tells us that the vast forest which in his time grew on the north side of London was the retreat of stags, fallow deer, wild boars, and bulls. Charles I. turned put wild boars in the New Forest, Hampshire, but they were destroyed in the Civil Wars. White, in his 'Natural History,' says that General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests of Wolmer and the Holt, to the great terror of the neighbour- hood ; but the country rose upon them and destroyed them. King Edward also lately, I think, tried the experiment though un- successfully of turning loose some German wild boars in Windsor Forest, for hunting purposes. Among the wild animals men- tioned by Camden as having become long since extinct in Wales is the boar, to which allusion is made, he says, by Dr. Davies " at the end of his Dictionary." There is a curious

Cof of the former existence of the wild r in Scotland in the place-name Boar Hills, St. Andrews. About 1120 Alexander I. gave a cursus apri, or " boar- chase," to the see of St. Andrews (J. B. Johnston's 'Place- names of Scotland,' 1892). Remains of the wild boar have been found in Palseolithic aves in England.

While attending building excavations in the City of London, I found that one of the commonest objects turned up in "the Roman evel" was the tusk (the "tush," as the workmen called it) of the wild boar. Some- times, indeed, these were encountered in profusion, often as black as the earth in which elapsed since the Roman occupation.
 * hey had lain for the centuries that have

Allusions to the custom of wearing the igure of a boar not in honour of the animal,

distinctly refers to the same usage and its religious intention as propitiating the pro-

ection of their goddess in battle. (See LI. T ewitt's 'Grave Mounds and their Contents,'

870, p. 255.)