i 4 INTRODUCTORY 



disappeared, that this acreage was given over to forest and 

 wastes, and that over this wild area the present-day denizens 

 of our mountain heaths and tiny woods spread in full posses- 

 sion. A picture arises of an old Scotland in which the wild 

 creatures, freed from a hopeless competition with man's 

 methods and advances, assorted themselves on mountain-side 

 and plain, in the meadows and in the forests, as their natures 

 determined and not as man decreed. But even such a picture 

 is far from complete ; for the present-day fauna is not the old 

 fauna. Many additions have to be made and some subtrac- 

 tions, if our picture of the old times is to approach accuracy. 



The fauna that greeted man was a rich one. In the 

 meadows browsed the Reindeer, from southern Dumfries- 

 shire to Caithness and even in Rousay in the Orkneys. 

 It has long since vanished from our fauna, and is now con- 

 fined to the northern portions of the Old and New Worlds. 

 In its company the Giant Fallow Deer or so-called "Irish 

 Elk" (Megctceros giganteus} may still have lingered in the 

 southern districts, though its latest Scottish remains appear 

 to have been contemporaneous with the marl deposits which 

 preceded the formation of the great peat-mosses in our lakes. 

 The Wild Horse probably still scampered over the plains 

 of the southern lowlands, disturbing there the herds of the 

 great Wild Ox (Bos taurus primigenius}, which spread 

 throughout the length and breadth of the land. Under 

 tussocks of grass, Northern Voles (Aruicola or Microtus 

 ratticeps], now extinct in Britain, made their nests in the 

 company of the Common Hare and perhaps also of the last 

 Scottish representatives of the Arctic Lemming (Myodes 

 torquatus\ whose bones have been found in an Arctic de- 

 posit near Edinburgh, and in the Bone Cave of Inchna- 

 damph in West Sutherland. To-day the first is found from 

 northern Europe and Asia southwards to Hungary; while 

 the last is confined to the central mountains of Scandinavia, 

 whence its migrations have been a source of wonder to 

 naturalists for many a century. In the wilds, the Mountain 

 or Variable Hare made its home, and in its spring and 

 autumn colour-change it still betrays its former association 

 with Arctic conditions. 



Great variety of life lurked in the shade of the forests. 

 The largest of existing deer, the Elk (A Ices alces] (Fig. 2) 



