

{Authors are responsible for nomenclature used.) 











The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 77 .] 1918 [May. 



CAVE-HUNTING IN SCOTLAND. 



By James Ritchie, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S.E. 



Recent years have seen a revival of the sport of cave- 

 hunting in Scotland, and for the reason that caves are none 

 too abundant in the northern kingdom, each new excavation 

 can hardly fail to add to the naturalists' knowledge of the 

 fauna of past ages. The period or periods during which a 

 cave has been inhabited determines to some extent the 

 interest its animal remains are likely to possess, for as the 

 settlements recede from the dawn of civilization in Scotland 

 and approach our own times, they become more frequent in 

 numbers, the remains of domestic creatures come to pre- 

 dominate over those of wild species, and the general 

 assemblage of animals more closely resembles the fauna of 

 to-day. 



It is not surprising to find, therefore, that those shore 

 caves of East Fife which were occupied in Roman and 

 early Christian times contain mainly the bones of such wild 

 species as still exist in Scotland, together with a few domestic 

 animals. The Boar only, of the wild creatures, has dis- 

 appeared. Yet the discoveries are not without interest, for 

 they show how different from the present was the early 

 distribution of our native animals. The mammalian remains 

 identified by Professor J. Cossar Ewart and the writer from 



77 n 



