;68 



NATURE 



[December 30, 1920 



Man and the Scottish Fauna.> 



IN undertaking- an estimate of the manner and 

 degree in which the fauna of Scotland has 

 been affected and modified in consequence of 

 human occupation, Dr. Ritchie has brought to- 

 gether a very large array of facts, and, on the 

 whole, he is laudably cautious in deduction there- 

 from. He begins by an attempt to visualise what 

 is now Scotland as it was when man first settled 

 there. Here is plenty of room for speculation, 

 and we cannot but think that some lines in the 

 sketch are drawn more firmly than is warranted 

 by the evidence. 



The earliest traces of the primitive peoples in Scot- 

 land are associated with the so-called fifty-foot beach. 

 Their canoes, simple dug-outs of pine, have been 

 found at Perth in the Carse clays of this period, and 

 frequently in similar deposits in the 

 Forth and Clyde valleys (p. 9). 



Among the very numerous 

 canoes exhumed in Scotland 

 during the nineteenth century 

 (seventeen dug-outs have been re- 

 corded from the Clyde valley 

 alone), not one has consisted of 

 any material but oak, the only 

 native timber that remains sound 

 for an indefinite period ; but, ac- 

 cepting " pine " as lapsus calami 

 for "oak," is Dr. Ritchie justified 

 in assuming such a high antiquity 

 for these canoes ? Passing on to 

 p. 20, we get a glimpse of a 

 landscape scarcely likely to pro- 

 duce either oak or pine big 

 enough for a dug-out. 



Partial and incomplete as our 

 survey of early Scotland must be, it 

 yet affords a reasonably accurate 

 picture of the country when 

 Neolithic man . . . founded his 

 most northern settlements in the 

 British Isles 9000 or more years 

 ago. It was a country of swamps, 

 low forests of birch, alder and 

 willow, fertile meadows and snow-capped moun- 

 tains. 



A difficulty arises in the stress laid by the 

 author on the 50-ft. beach as the cradle of the 

 human race in Scotland. He never mentions the 

 25-ft. beach which, being thousands of years 

 younger than the other, is far better defined and 

 more extensively preserved, especially on the west 

 coast. Take, for example, the shores of the Bay 

 of Luce; while the 50-ft. beach, can only be traced 

 here and there in fragments, the 25-ft. beach runs 

 unbroken for miles, forming the terminal moraine 

 of the land ice, without any margin between its 

 ancient high-water mark and the base of the 

 ground moraine — a mantle of boulder clay in 

 places 100 ft. thick. The difficulty consists in 



1 " The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland : A Study in Faunal 

 Evolution. " By Dr. James Ritchie. Pp. xvi-(-550. (Cambridge : At the 

 University Press, 1920.) Price 28J. net. 



accounting for the existence of men, or at least 

 for the preservation of their traces, in the older 

 50-ft. beach ; whereas it is clear that the land ice 

 was grinding over all after the elevation which 

 formed the younger 25-ft. beach. 



Passing to later times. Dr. Ritchie takes us 

 on firmer ground, and will meet with no dissent 

 from his proposition that the main factor in the 

 extinction of some indigenous mammals and 

 birds was the destruction of the primeval forest, 

 the woodland which survived longest being con- 

 sumed as fuel for iron-smelting in the eighteenth 

 century. The squirrel has found its way back as 

 plantations increased ; so have the great spotted 

 woodpecker and the jay ; while the capercailzie, 

 which became extinct towards the close of the 



NO. 2670, VOL. 106] 



Fig. r. — Soay sheep— a primitive domesticated breed preserved only in Scotland. From "The 

 influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland." 



eighteenth century, was successfully re-established 

 at Tay mouth in 1837-38, and now abounds in 

 several counties. We still await the return of 

 the beautiful green woodpecker (not mentioned 

 by Dr. Ritchie), which Thomas the Rhymer 

 listened to long ago on Tweedside. 



In a mery mornynge of Maye, 

 By Huntie bankkes myself allone, 

 I herde the jay and the throstle cokke, 

 The mawys menyde hir of hir song. 

 The wode'ivale beryde as a belle. 

 That all the wode abowte me ronge. 



While game-preserving is responsible for the 

 disappearance of the polecat and the goshawk, 

 our loss of the osprey and the erne must be laid 

 to the account of egg-collectors. On the other 

 hand. Dr. Ritchie enumerates many species of 

 beast and bird that have increased with the ad- 



