CHAPTER V. 



THE BRITISH MAMMALS PAST AND PRESENT. 



IN our list of British mammals one is subterranean, five are closely 

 preserved, three are more or less preserved, twenty-seven live 

 in the water, and the remaining twenty-six are either nocturnal or 

 crepuscular that is to say, only those survive that man cannot get 

 at. Of these, thirty-eight may be described as common, but none 

 of them so all over the country, twenty-seven are decidedly rare, and 

 seven owe their place in the list to their having been met with on 

 one occasion only. 



This suggests the question as to what is a British animal, the 

 reply being that it is one that is not recorded as having been intro- 

 duced into this country, and has had the misfortune to be captured 

 to prove its occurrence and its identity. That it has drifted here 

 accidentally, that is, a mere straggler, perhaps to our remotest 

 islands, makes no difference ; to require it to have been born within 

 our boundaries is evidently too severe a test ; neither need it have 

 resided here for any length of time ; all that is required is for it to 

 be captured and by its death obtain its naturalisation. 



Our list may not satisfy everyone, but it is as we found it. Two 

 species in particular may be singled out for objection. The Fallow 

 Deer is stated, with much probability, to have been introduced by 

 the Romans, and doubts have been cast by some on the origin of 

 our Park Cattle, which are said to be feral that is, descended from 

 domesticated species run wild in just the same way as the wild 

 goats of Mull and Killarney, or the Four-horned Sheep of St. Kilda 

 and the Hebrides which, though wild now, are known to have 

 come from the sheep that found their way ashore from the wrecks 

 of some of the vessels of the Spanish Armada. 



As with the present so with the past, every animal that we find 

 has died here we claim as British, and although in this book we are 

 concerned with existing species now in this area, we can hardly omit 

 mentioning those still existent elsewhere which used to live here, 

 as well as those which have become extinct throughout the world. 

 Including these, we shall have a very long list, which, of necessity, 

 will become longer as the rocks yield up their records, and will never 

 be really complete. As we have it here, it runs to two hundred and 

 seventy-five species, of which seventy-two are still with us, thirty- 

 four are existent elsewhere, and one hundred and sixty-nine have 

 died out. 



This enlarged British list takes us back to the times when there 

 was no Britain, for the geological changes have been great. Our 

 first amphibian dates from the Lower Carboniferous, our first reptile 



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