SOME LESSER DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 107 



Europe (see p. 247) owe none of their peculiarities to Scottish 

 influence. Such is true also of our Cats, descended from 

 the Egyptian Wild Cat (Felis ocreata], although in the 

 Highland areas there has probably been some admixture of 

 blood with our own wild species (Felis sylvestris], especially 

 in former times when the Wild Cat was more common than 

 it is to-day. 



The Goat, offspring of the Wild Goat (Capra aegagrus] 

 of the Mediterranean Isles, Asia Minor and Persia, notwith- 

 standing its early introduction to Britain, and -its former 

 abundance in the Scottish Highlands, has suffered at our 

 hands no change worthy of remark; and the same may be 

 said of the Ferret, long regarded as a domesticated variety of 

 the Common Polecat (Mustela p^tiorius} but recently found to 

 be related to the Polecat of Turkestan and Siberia (Mustela 

 eversmanni}. 



Hive-Bees are domesticated in the sense that man houses 

 and cares for them, that he feeds them in winter, and has 

 exercised his limited powers of selection and interbreeding 

 in perfecting the race. Ordinary hive-bees are little altered 

 derivatives of the Wild Bee (Apis mellifica} of southern 

 Europe. They were domesticated by the early Greeks, and 

 were common throughout Europe at an early date. There 

 is no record of their introduction to Scotland, but in the 

 sixteenth and subsequent centuries many Acts were passed 

 by the Scottish Parliament protecting bees from the "stealers 

 of hives, and destroyers thereof." As the first reference to 

 Bees which I have found in these Acts occurs in 1503, it is 

 probable that they were becoming common in Scotland only 

 towards the close of the fifteenth century. Their appearance 

 in some of the islands belongs to a much later date. In 

 Orkney they were so little known at the end of the seven- 

 teenth century that Mackaile can record the exploit of a youth 

 who "stopt the skep (which a lady had taken thither from 

 Angus) with a piece of a peat" on the plea that he found 

 the Bees all flying away; and it was not till 1909 that Lewis 

 was stocked with its present race of Hive- Bees, previous 

 importations having become extinct. By frequent introduc- 

 tions of fresh blood from Italy and other parts of Europe man 

 is constantly endeavouring to influence the nature and 

 increase the productiveness of the Hive- Bee. 



