BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1291 



is plain. The Celtic Shorthorn was brought to Scotland; it was not 

 domesticated there, and so with most of the others except the pig. 



There is an old-fashioned race of sheep in the uninhabited island 

 of Soay in the St. Kilda group, a race which links with the Wild 

 Mouflon of Corsica and Sardinia, one of the ancestors of domesti- 

 cated sheep; and there is an old-fashioned Turbary Sheep in the 

 Shetlands, a race which links with the Neolithic "peat sheep" which 

 were shepherded through a great part of Europe by Neolithic man ; 

 but there is no reason to believe that sheep-domestication occurred 

 in Scotland. That race-improvement continued is obvious, as to 

 this day. 



There were wild horses in Scotland before man came — the Celtic 

 Pony type, Eqmis agilis, common long ago in Western Europe, and 

 traces of these hnger in the Hebridean pony and the Shetland pony. 

 A herd lasted on, they say, in the Forest of Birse till 1507; but the 

 main stock of domesticated horses probably came in the train of the 

 Neolithic herdsmen from the Continent, notably, perhaps, from 

 Scandinavia. 



II. The Large Carnivores. — ^The early history of the wolf in 

 Scotland is obscure, but there is no doubt as to its former abundance 

 and fierceness. "This regioun, throw the cauld humouris thairof, 

 ingeneris wolffs of feirs and cruel nature". According to Boece, the 

 slayer of ane wolf was to have ane ox for his reward. In loio in the 

 forest of the Stocket, near Aberdeen, Malcolm II was saved from a 

 wolf only by the presence of mind of a younger son of Donald of the 

 Isles, who got the lands of Skene in recognition of his timely aid. 

 Compulsory wolf -hunts were common even in the fifteenth century. 

 Spitals, like that of Glenshee, owed their origin largely to the need 

 for protecting travellers from the wolves that became especially 

 bold after nightfall. How many names, like Wolflee, recall the fierce 

 creature — one of man's great sifters and spurs. The shrinkage and 

 the burning of the forests reduced the wolves, but some lingered till 

 the seventeenth century, perhaps even to 1743. 



Along with the wolves we may rank the Brown Bear, which lin- 

 gered in Scotland into the Christian era. We know that Caledonian 

 Bears were transported overseas to Rome to display their fierceness 

 in the amphitheatre, and they probably lingered in the forests long 

 after the Roman legions had gone. The bear formed part of our 

 sifting, and perhaps the lynx helped the early shepherds to foresight. 



III. Small Carnivores. — As to other carnivores, such as fox, 

 badger, otter, polecat, stoat, weasel, marten and wild cat, all with 

 us still, the second last dwindling towards the vanishing point, they 

 have a threefold importance to man. First, though none are danger- 

 ous to man himself, some are hostile to his poultry and the like, 

 therefore man must be on the alert against them — up to the limit 

 of upsetting the balance in the opposite direction and allowing the 



