SCOTLAND AS MAN FOUND IT 19 



ful, but their remains, apart from multitudes of wing-cases 

 of beetles, have not been recognized in the early deposits. 



In the lakes, and possibly still in the rivers was abundance 

 of the red-bellied Char whose present-day descendants have 

 been imprisoned by succeeding changes of climate and 

 conditions in a few of the deeper lakes; and the fresh waters 

 swarmed with hosts of smaller fry, Crustaceans, Wheel- 

 animalcules or Rotifers, Water-bears or Tardigrades, and 

 such like, on which Char and Trout and migrant Salmon 

 made comfortable diet. 



Of the denizens of the seas which bounded the Scotland 

 of early man, we have little direct evidence, but such as it 

 is, it indicates a temperate marine fauna very similar to that 

 of the present day. Apart from the contents of the estuarine 

 deposits contemporaneous with the Fifty-Foot Beach, we 

 have to depend on the refuse which Neolithic man accumu- 

 lated in his kitchen-middens in different parts of the country. 

 These, however, afford proof of a wonderfully varied sea- 

 fare. The earliest inhabitants of Britain, the hunters and 

 fishermen of the Oronsay shell-mound, varied their diet, as 

 Mr Henderson Bishop's recent researches show, with many 

 species of marine mammals, fishes, Crustacea and molluscan 

 shell-fish. In the refuse-heaps have been found remains of 

 a species of Dolphin, of the Common Seal {Phoca vitulina], 

 and of the Grey Seal (Halickcerus grypus] which still occurs 

 on the rocky shores of the Outer Hebrides; but very rarely 

 on the coasts of the mainland and on the Inner Islands. Of 

 fishes, eight species have been preserved, such as the Conger 

 Eel (Conger conger], the Black Sea Bream (Canthams linea- 

 tus], the Sea Bream (Pagellus centrodontus], the Spotted 

 Wrasse (Labrus maculatus], the Angel Fish (Squatina 

 squatinci}, the Tope (Galeus canis), the Spiny Dog-fish 

 (Squalus acantkias), and the Thornback Ray (Raia clavata], 

 Only two species of Crabs were found the Common Edible 

 Crab (Cancer pagurus] and the Swimming Crab or Fiddler 

 (Porhtnus puber], but enormous heaps, containing thousands 

 upon thousands of molluscan shells, yielded a long list of 25 

 marine species, all of which are common on the West Coast 

 at the present day. The molluscan fauna of Scottish seas, 

 however, was not absolutely identical with that of to-day. 

 For example, in a shell-mound composed of refuse from 



