BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1289 



INFLUENCE OF THE SCOTTISH FAUNA 



As a particularly interesting case of the inter-relations of animals 

 with human life, we may briefly consider the Scottish fauna. The 

 student will readily extend the survey to other countries, such as 

 North America. 



1. 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. 

 This was the time of what we call the original European Fauna. But 

 of this there are almost no living remains. None have contributed 

 much to our heritage except the soil-making earthworms. Except 

 for science and imagination, it matters little that the mammoth 

 once lived in Scotland. 



2. There set in a succession of Ice Ages, interrupted by milder 

 Inter-Glacial periods, and this was a time of terrible elimination. 

 As vast ice-sheets, sometimes 3,000 feet thick, covered the whole of 

 Scotland and the whole of England except a strip along what is 

 now the south coast, all the old tenants went by the board. Nothing 

 lives or dies to itself, and doubtless there are far-reaching influences 

 of these Ages of Horror — lasting even now. But this is a diflicult 

 inquiry. 



3. When the tide began at last to turn and the ice- sheets melted, 

 there was the interesting time of the 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 humbler creatures and many flowering plants. 

 All the mammals we now have came then, besides others that we 

 have since lost. 



4. Towards the disappearance of the great ice-sheets and the 

 appearance of great tracts of country 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 move- 

 ment led to insulation — shutting the door to further colonisation 

 as far as land animals are concerned. 



5. Thus our question comes to be: What larger animals were 

 established in Scotland when Neolithic Man settled there some 

 ten thousand years ago. Of Palaeolithic man in Scotland there is 

 little secure evidence unless in the Inchnadamph caves, though he 

 lived in Britain further south ; the firstcomers that we are quite sure 

 of were Neolithic, "long-headed, square-jawed, short but agile- 

 limbed hunters and fishermen", using well- fashioned stone imple- 

 ments and weapons. 



What higher animals greeted Neolithic man when he arrived in 



