EVOLUTION 1057 



the past thirty years, and this is attributed to the increase of small 

 European birds, whose eggs and young it eats, and also to the food 

 afforded in and about trout-hatcheries ! 



THE CASE OF SCOTLAND.— Analogous to Mr. G. M. Thomson's 

 study of New Zealand is Dr. James Ritchie's Influence of Man on 

 Animal Life in Scotland (1920). Both are books of distinction. In 

 ancient times — long before the Ice Ages and long before man 

 reached Scotland — the British Area was simply an outlying part of 

 the European Continent, and must have shared its fauna. But of 

 tliis original fauna there are few save fossilised British remains. 

 There set in a succession of Ice Ages, interrupted by milder inter- 

 glacial periods. Vast ice-sheets, sometimes 3,000 feet thick, covered 

 the whole of vScotland and most of England except an area along 

 what is now the south coast. Almost all the old animal tenants of 

 Scotland were eliminated. When the ice-tide began at last to turn 

 and the ice-sheets melted, there was a re-peopling of Britain from 

 the Continent; for there were grassy lowlands stretching across 

 parts of the present North Sea. The re-peopling brought back not 

 only many mammals, but lower animals as well, and many flower- 

 ing plants. All the present-day native mammals came then, besides 

 others that have since been lost. Towards the melting of the thick 

 ice-sheets and the uncovering of large tracts of countr}^ into which 

 colonists crowded from the Continent, there seems to have been a 

 marked depression of the land so that considerable parts of Britain 

 may have presented the appearance of an archipelago. This or 

 some subsequent movement led on to complete insulation, shutting 

 the door to further colonisation as far as the larger land animals 

 are concerned. Small creatures are, of course, readily introduced, 

 like seeds, on the feet of birds. 



Except for some indications, not yet fully worked out, in Inchna- 

 damph caves in Sutherlandshire, there is no evidence of Palaeolithic 

 Man in Scotland, though he lived in Britain farther south; the 

 first-comers to Scotland, perhaps 8,000 years ago, were Neolithic, 

 "long-limbed, square-jawed, short, but agile-limbed hunters and 

 fishermen", using well-fashioned stone implements and weapons. 

 Our present question is: What higher animals greeted Neolithic 

 Man when he arrived in Scotland? The answer is: the present 

 Mammalian fauna, minus some that have been introduced later, 

 such as Rabbits, Rats, and domestic mammals, and plus some that 

 have been lost, such as Reindeer, Bear, and Wolf. As regards their 

 origin, the original Scottish mammals, present when man estab- 

 lished himself, might be grouped in three contingents: (a) those 

 distinctively Arctic, like the Reindeer and the Lemming; (&) those 

 of the forests, like the Red Deer and the Elk; and (c) those of the 

 plains like the Hare and the Wild Horse. A few details in regard to 



VOL. II Y 



