THE WILD CAT OF SCOTLAND 67 



parts of Britain had been occupied by post-glacial mammals, 

 even if the rate of elevation was equal over the whole British 

 area " ; and he tells us that " the close of the glacial period in 

 Scotland probably coincided with the existence of man in 

 those parts of Europe where the climate was less severe, and 

 notably in the basins of the Thames and the Somme, in which 

 bones of many extinct animals are deposited with flint 

 instruments of the antique type." Amongst these extinct 

 animals are the fossil bones of a cat, which, as Sir Richard 

 Owen remarks, are " undistinguishable from the analogous 

 parts of the still existing species of Wild Cat." 



The Wild Cat was probably an inhabitant of Southern and 

 Middle Britain for a long period previous to its appearance 

 in Scotland, when, by the termination of the Great Ice Age, 

 the climate of these northern regions had been sufficiently 

 modified to allow of the existence of animal and vegetable 

 life. 



What were the obstacles which prevented its migration 

 into Scotland ? 



Before the last upheaval of the land, when the Lowlands 

 were emerging from the great Glacial Sea, an arm of that sea 

 extended from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth, 

 completely separating the northern from the southern portion ; 

 and Sir Charles Lyell ("Antiquity of Man," pp. 52-55) tells 

 us that this state continued long after the advent of man in 

 those parts. Skeletons of whales and other marine animals 

 have been found in the loamy and peaty beds in the Carse 

 of Stirling, and near them pointed implements made of 

 deer's horns. The position of these fossil whales and bone 

 implements shows, says Lyell, that the upheaval by which 

 the raised beach at Leith was laid dry extended westward 

 as far as the Clyde, where marine strata containing buried 

 canoes have been discovered." This same upward movement 

 reached simultaneously east and west, and as far north as 

 the estuary of the Tay, and a similar movement occurred much 

 farther south, on the estuary of the Solvvay Firth. Wallace 

 ("Geographical Distribution of Animals," vol. i. pp. 12, 13) 

 points out that arms of the sea are barriers to mammal 

 migration. Very few mammals, he writes, can swim over 

 any considerable extent of sea, though many can swim well 



