therefore actively engaged in a renewed bout of destruction, which in 1683 enabled an observer to say about Co. Leitrim: ‘The wolves, which were very numerous, are now very scarce…’. By the close of the seventeenth century the battle was nearly won and Ireland’s reputation as ‘Wolf-land’ could no longer be literally sustained. But the saga of the ‘last’ wolf continued through the eighteenth century with some counties being entirely cleared while in others, like Kerry, more hunting was required. But as the woods dwindled the wolf was left with straggly pockets of trees, which made it even more vulnerable. Eventually silence fell: there was no more ‘panting, lolling, vapouring’38 outside farmyards and no more howling.
European frogs and natterjack toads
The history of the European frog in Ireland has perplexed biologists for several centuries. Was it introduced in 1699, or does its lineage stretch back into the mists of time, to the postglacial period at least 10,000 years ago? The story begins with early categoric statements regarding the frog’s absence. Donatus, the ninth century Irish monk, appears to have been the first to speak:39
Nulla venena nocent, nec serpens serpit in herba
Nec conquesta canit garrula rana lacu.
No poison there infects, no scaly snake,
Creeps through the grass; nor croaking frog annoys the lake.
Cambrensis echoed these sentiments in Topographia Hiberniae, written in the 1180s:43 ‘Of all kinds of reptiles, only those that are not harmful are found in Ireland. It has no poisonous reptiles. It has no serpents or snakes, toads or frogs, tortoises or scorpions.’ But Cambrensis contradicts himself a few pages later when he speaks of the discovery of at least one European frog, found near Waterford: ‘Nevertheless in our days a frog was found near Waterford in some grassy land, and was brought to Robert Poer…’. It was seen by many people including Duvenaldus (Domhnall), King of Ossory, ‘who happened to be there at the time, with a great shaking of his head and great sorrow in his heart at last said (and he was a man of great wisdom among his people and loyal to them): “that reptile brings very bad news to Ireland”.’ So what are we to make of this? What is the real truth about the frog’s pedigree in Ireland?
Noxious animals and their evil associations were an obsession of early Christian commentators who placed the frog in the same category as toads, snakes and lizards because of a superficial similarity. Thus when St Patrick, in one generous swing of the crozier, drove all the pernicious creatures away, the frog left the country – or so Christian mythology claims. Another story concerns a certain Dr Gwithers, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, labelled ‘frog introducer to Ireland’ who is supposed to have performed his sly deed in 1699.40 One snag is that there is no Dr Gwithers recorded on the books of Trinity College, although there was a Dr Gwithers who was one of William Molyneux’s network of correspondents gathering information for the English Atlas, an ambitious and ill-fated project launched by the London bookseller Moses Pitt in 1682 (see here). Dr Gwithers, in his notes supplied to Molyneux, now lodged in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, categorically states that the frog was absent from Ireland. But his zoological credentials were seriously compromised when he noted that both the stag and otter were also absent which, of course, was not true.41
Another chapter in the mystery of the frog’s antiquity was unravelled some 355 m up on the side of Keishcorran Hill as the present century dawned. Here, at one of the southern outposts of the limestone region in Sligo and Leitrim, at about 90 m above the base of the hill, on the southwestern side, is a line of low cliffs some 15–30 m high punctured by a series of cave entrances. The caves provided refuge and shelter to many animals during the late glacial period some 12,000 years ago. Bones of brown bear, red deer and wolf from this period have been found buried in the earthen floors under more recent material. Other animals came as prey brought by others. During the excavation of one of these caves, the Plunkett Cave, in 1901, a large number of frog bones were found in the upper stratum of soil extending to a depth of some 30 cm on the cave floor. No doubt this stratum was of recent origin, but below were much older layers of soil that revealed more frog bones, associated with Arctic lemmings. Lemmings were present in the Irish landscape some 10,000 years ago as evidenced by the radiocarbon dating of bones found in the Edenvale Cave, Co. Cork, but probably not much longer after that as the rise in temperatures made habitats unsuitable for them. In other words, if frogs were contemporary with the lemmings they had to date back about 10,000 years.
Some of the fossilised frog bones recovered from Plunkett Cave lay in the clay stratum nearly 2 m below the surface layers. Such depth ruled out any likelihood that frogs from more recent times had burrowed down through this overburden, or were deposited there by other animals digging up holes, or had been displaced by soil shifts caused by running water coursing through the cave systems. Moreover the bones were blackened and filled with clay showing that they had not arrived recently. The evidence was enough to convince Scharff that the frog was indeed a member of the ancient fauna of Ireland.24,42 But there are other opinions about the bones’ antiquity and the argument can only be settled with a radiocarbon date. That this task has not yet been undertaken is quite astonishing. As the European frog lives quite happily throughout Europe and within the Arctic Circle there is no reason why low temperatures in Ireland, at the end of the last glacial phase some 10,000 years ago, would have cramped their style or inhibited their spread throughout the country.
The natterjack toad’s history in Ireland is equally controversial without any definitive conclusion as to its antiquity. However, the somewhat slender evidence would point to it being a more recent arrival in the country than the frog.
View from Keishcorran Cave, Co. Sligo, where ancient frog bones were discovered.
Although Cambrensis observed that there were no toads in Ireland in the twelfth century43 there is no evidence in his texts that he went to west Kerry or had any informants from the region. There was no written reference to toads until 1836, when J.T. Mackay, botanist and author of Flora Hibernica, reported seeing them in 1805 in Callanafersy, a large district between the lower parts of the Rivers Laune and Maine adjacent to the eastern end of Castlemaine Harbour.44
How did these toads come to Ireland and why are they restricted to a relatively small sandy coastal area in west Kerry? Are they relicts of a once more widely spread population from a warmer and drier period? What do we make of Chute, writing from Blennerville on 31 March 1846, to Thompson, author of The Natural History of Ireland, ‘I believe the Natter-jack is indigenous to Kerry, though there is an old tradition that a ship at one time brought a lot of them and let them go at the head of Dingle Bay. This is born out by the fact that this is the only part of Kerry that they are met in: a district extending from the sandhills at Inch at Rosbegh at the head of the bay (where they are most numerous) to Carrignaferay, about ten miles in length in low marshy ground, and about the same number in breadth.’45 A century later, Praeger spoke contemptuously of this invasion hypothesis: ‘Could misdirected ingenuity go further than to suggest the importation or shipwreck of a cargo of toads on that lonely and harbourless coast!’20
Beebee says of natterjack toads in Ireland: ‘It seems much more likely that they are truly indigenous’ and he argues that they are part of the Lusitanian biota of the Iberian peninsula which is well known in southwest Ireland.46 However, the natterjack can hardly be considered Lusitanian with a European distribution stretching northwards to southern Sweden and into western Russia.
Their indigenous status is also supported by Praeger who wrote ‘There is no doubt that in spite of its extremely restricted range the animal is indigenous in Kerry – a relict species like
