III. I 



DESTRUCTION FOR SAFETY OF MAN AND 

 OF HIS DOMESTIC STOCK 



COEVAL with his search for food began man's active 

 defence against his fellow-dwellers in the wilds, but it was 

 hardly till his wealth and welfare became centred in domestic 

 flocks that his destruction began to tell upon the animal 

 world. Then his energies, directed against marauders, fell 

 heavily upon the beasts and birds of prey, until with in- 

 creased perfection of weapons, he drove one and then 

 another to extinction within the limits of his homeland. 

 His influence in this respect can best be traced by following 

 the stories of some of the creatures which fell under his ban. 



BEASTS OF PREY 

 THE LYNX 



The Northern Lynx (Lynx lynx] (cf. Fig. 3, p. 16), once 

 a native of the greater part of Britain, and now confined to 

 the forests of northern Europe although a close relative is 

 found in Asia, makes but one appearance in Scottish history, 

 when it shared with Neolithic man the wilds of western 

 Sutherlandshire. The bones found by Drs Peach and Home 1 

 in the Bone Cave of Allt nan Uamh near Inchnadamph, 

 in deposits containing blackened and burnt hearthstones 

 of Neolithic fires, vouch for its presence in the early days, 

 but of its occurrence and disappearance written history 

 makes no mention. It seems to have died out at a far 

 distant period, and the probability is that man, in defence 

 of his flocks, hastened its extermination in Scotland. 



1 Identified by Mr E. T. Newton. 



