I. 2 



SCOTLAND AS MAN FOUND IT 



Heir agane sail ye se braid planes, thair wattirrie dales : heir a dry 

 knowe, or a thin forrest, thair a thick wodd, all meruellouse delectable 

 to the eye throuch the varietie baith of thair situatione, and of the 

 thing selfe that thair growis. 



Historic of Scotland by Jhone Leslie, 1578. 



(Dalrymple's Translation.) 



As a preliminary to the detailed consideration of man's 

 influence upon Scottish animal life, let us try to picture the 

 condition of the country as primitive man found it, when in 

 his northward wanderings his communities ventured beyond 

 the natural boundary of the Cheviot Hills. Only with such 

 a picture at the back of our minds can we hope to realize 

 the changes which man has wrought in the passing of time. 

 Before trying to gauge the extent of man's trading, we 

 must endeavour to assess the capital which Nature placed 

 in his hands to begin with. 



THE ARRIVAL OF MAN IN SCOTLAND 



Notwithstanding that even in the more distant stages 

 of the Early Stone Age, man had travelled dry-shod from 

 the land that is now France, across the grassy valley that 

 separated the main mass of Europe from its western pro- 

 longation which is now the British Isles, there is no sure 

 sign that his wanderings in Palaeolithic times ever brought 

 him to the southern limit of Scotland. For tens of thousands 

 of years he dwelt on the plains of England, leaving his 

 handiwork rudely dressed stone implements of various 

 types which fall into a long range of stages from the early 

 Chellean to the late Magdalenian or Reindeer period- 

 scattered over those southern portions which lay clear of 

 the heaviest and most persistent ice-fields of the Great Ice 

 Age. But the northern portions of these islands, still shrouded 



