262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITtJTION, 1940 



It was Neolithic man who set the ball a-rolling through his out- 

 standing achievements in domesticating wild animals and in devel- 

 oping the cultivation of the soil and growing of crops. For these 

 achievements, apart from laying the foundation of a new era in 

 the progress of civilization, started a series of changes which have 

 profoundly influenced the distribution of life upon the earth. In 

 one direction the safety of flocks and herds demanded the elimina- 

 tion of beasts and birds which threatened them, and in another the 

 need of land for crops and pasturage played havoc with the wild 

 environment and so with the fauna which it sustained and sheltered, 

 although the crops themselves encouraged the multiplication of cer- 

 tain elements in the fauna which became the pests of agriculture. 



The Neolithic age, which originated these changes, reached West- 

 ern Europe only some 8,000 years B. C, though in the East and 

 in the lands of old culture it began several thousands of years earlier. 

 But Neolithic man, although he initiated the most far-reaching 

 changes in plant and animal life, was himself, with his implements 

 of wood and stone and limited powers of offense, ineffective in his 

 interference. Even in a limited area like Scotland, few animals 

 died out during his rule and it would be difficult to bring home to 

 him responsibility for their disappearance. For the effective intro- 

 duction of man as an agent of evolutionary change we must look to 

 a time more recent. And that time is determined by his i?icreas- 

 ing efficiency as a cultivator and destroyer, and particularly by the 

 need for food and fire demanded by an increasing population. These 

 influences began to make their mark about the tenth century of our 

 era when several of the interesting members of the primeval fauna 

 of this country had disappeared or were on the verge of extinction, 

 but in the centuries following the sixteenth they commenced a period 

 of pressure, which, increasing in intensity, has transformed the faunas 

 of civilized lands. 



It is not an accident that the emergence of man as a major factor 

 in the evolution of faunas coincided with the increased power of 

 destruction presented to him by the invention of gunpowder and 

 guns, and with that extraordinary increase in population which in 

 the last 300 years has multiplied, almost five times over, the numbers 

 of mankind upon the earth (see Pearl, 1937). For this burst of 

 population was itself the accompaniment of intensified agriculture 

 and stock-rearing, of the spread of industries and development of 

 commerce, all of which have had profound repercussions upon abo- 

 riginal faunas and floras. 



While modern man has existed upon the earth for some 30,000 

 years, his part as a distinctive agent in the evolution of faunas is 

 limited to a thousand years, and within that span his great trans- 



