SCOTLAND AS MAN FOUND IT 17 



banks, Otters were to be found, and the European Beaver, 

 whose last surviving colonies linger on in a few localities 

 in Scandinavia, Russia, Germany and Austria, ranged from 

 Dumfriesshire at least as far north as the parish of Kinloch 

 in Perthshire. 



Many beasts of prey followed upon the trail of the 

 creatures of the forests and plains. A few survivors of 

 the European Lynx (Lynx lynx), now all but exter- 

 minated except in Scandinavia, still awaited in Scotland 

 the coming of man, for the remains of this species have 

 been found by Dr Peach and Dr Home in a Bone Cave at 

 Inchnadamph in Sutherlandshire 1 associated with relics of 

 human habitation. In the same cave, a tooth of a Brown 

 Bear (Ursus arctos) was discovered, but the distribution of 

 the Bear in Scottish woods must have been a wide one, 

 for a well-preserved skull was unearthed many years ago in 

 a peat-bog at Shaws in Dumfriesshire, and an eye-tooth was 

 once found in a Caithness broch. Of the larger beasts of 

 prey, Wolves were the most common, and because of their 

 abundance the most dangerous, and amongst the lesser 

 carnivores the Common Fox, Stoat and Weasel shared in 

 the smaller prey of the woodlands and meadows. 



1 1 goes without saying that great variety of birds inhabited 

 the country, but their remains, owing to their small size, 

 have seldom been recovered from the early deposits, and 

 have still less often been identified with certainty. We know 

 that on the moorlands the Ptarmigan (Fig. 4), of Arctic origin, 

 was abundant, for the bones of hundreds of individuals oc- 

 curred in the Inchnadamph cave, where they far surpassed 

 in number the relics of their fellows, the Red Grouse. The 

 Raven occupied lowland areas which it has long since 

 deserted, and the Great Auk, now extinct, tenanted the 

 Northern and Western Isles at least as far south as Oronsay, 

 where its remains have been found in an early Neolithic or 

 Azilian kitchen-midden. The same refuse-heap yielded re- 

 mains of many sea and shore birds which occur in Scotland 

 at the present day, such as the Cormorant and Shag, Gan- 

 net, Guillemot and Razorbill, Gulls, Terns, Wild Ducks, 

 W T ild Geese, the Redbreasted Merganser and the Water 



1 The identification of the animal remains from this interesting cave 

 was made by Mr E. T. Newton, F.R.S., formerly of the Geological Survey. 



