1292 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



increase of mice and voles, and other small pests. Second, in earty 

 days especially, these smaller carnivores were of considerable 

 importance for their fur. Thirdly, their greatest human importance 

 was probably in keeping alive for a longer time the hunting habit. 

 Some anthropologists, like Prof. Carveth Reed, are making out a 

 good case for the formative importance of the hunting period, which 

 came before the agricultural and pastoral. It seems to have entered 

 very deeply into human nature and left indelible marks. Even from 

 the fox's point of view there is something to be said for the hunt. 



IV. Marine Animals and Fisheries. — Along with the terrestrial 

 carnivores we must think of those of the sea — the seals, for these 

 have often been of human importance on our coasts, especially in 

 the West. Seals yield food, oil, and fur, and the seal-hunt educates 

 good qualities, of seamanship and more. In 1830 MacGillivray wrote 

 of Gaskir (or Haskeir), twelve miles from Harris, that "great 

 numbers of seals are killed upon it annually, upwards of a hundred 

 and twenty having been destroyed in one day". This is always man's 

 sad way — the ruthless savage comes alive again and furious greed 

 brings legitimate exploitation to a sorry end. The walrus used often 

 to visit Scottish coasts, but it was persecuted into extreme rarity, 

 indeed practically into disappearance. 



In our survey we must not forget the whales, for though the 

 larger and more valuable ones have never been common enough 

 in Scottish waters to lead to systematic local whaling, we must 

 remember the old days of the Peterhead and Dundee fleets. These 

 fostered an adventurous spirit and strenuous vigour, and they had 

 far-reaching consequences — more important than whalebone; as 

 for instance the active aiding both of Arctic and Antarctic explora- 

 tion. Smaller whales, like the rorqual (Balasnoptera) and the por- 

 poise, have often saved the economic situation in the Western Isles, 

 and apart from oil they were often used as food as late as the seven- 

 teenth century. The trouble with all whaling, however, has been 

 that man ends it by his greed. 



This may be a convenient place for a reference to the familiar 

 fact that one of the most important parts of the Scottish faunistic 

 heritage is the abundance of fishes in the sea. How far-reaching in 

 its social and economic aspects has been the development of sea- 

 fisheries. How important also in fostering a fine type of man, fitted 

 for the strenuous and adventurous calling. "I've brought up three 

 families", a Lewis man said proudly, "on the point of the heuk". 

 Now the good fishing in the North, as compared, for instance, with 

 the Mediterranean, depends on the abundance of the marine Plankton 

 that is characteristic of northern waters. 



Let us think for a moment of what we should like to do with a 

 subject like this. Just as it is important and illuminating from the 

 geological side to ask what the Coal Measures have meant for man 



