CONCLUSION. 209 



home in Britain was among the remote hills of Caith- 

 ness. 



To the naturalist it is a somewhat sad reflection, 

 that animals of the forest and the chase, now only 

 known by name as the inhabitants of other countries, 

 were once as familiar to our ancestors as they are at 

 present to the people of the remote kingdoms which 

 they frequent. Man has been warring against these 

 forest denizens, and as tract after tract which they 

 once claimed as their own has been brought under 

 the ploughshare, they have been driven farther and 

 farther back, until the last of them has been blotted 

 out from our fauna. 



Lake and moor have become fields of yellow grain ; 

 forest has been changed into morass, morass into 

 moor, and moor again into forest, until finding 

 nowhere to rest in peace, the bear, the beaver, the 

 reindeer, the wild boar, and the wolf, have become 

 in Britain amongst the things that were. 



