III. 2 



DESTRUCTION FOR FOOD 



ALTHOUGH the destruction of animals for his own safety 

 was a primitive necessity for man, it can scarcely have 

 preceded in time destruction of wild creatures for the sake 

 of their products. The men of the Old Stone Age were 

 hunters by nature. Upon animals they depended in great 

 part for their food, and when clothing was invented, the skins 

 of wild beasts formed a simple and efficient protection from 

 the elements. The bone needles of the later Solutrian de- 

 posits of France indicate that in those early (Palaeolithic) 

 days the art of stitching skins was already known. 



When the tribes of the much later Azilian culture reached 

 Scotland, the arts of hunting and of the use of skins for 

 clothing were already of long standing, and although refuse 

 heaps show that our earliest settlers subsisted largely upon 

 fish and molluscan shell-fish, there is evidence that the 

 larger animals also fell to their spears. As we shall see, 

 however, the effective interference with animals useful on 

 account of their products, belongs to a much later period of 

 civilization. 



At all times animals large and small have been slain for 

 food, but as other motives have entered into the pursuit of 

 many, and especially of the larger creatures sport in part 

 determining the chase of such as the Red Deer and the 

 Boar, their blubber that of Seals, and their skins that of 

 Hares and Rabbits these will be mentioned in the sections 

 which follow, leaving for present consideration some of the 

 lesser food creatures. Fortunately, no native of Scotland, 

 unless it be the Garefowl, against which other influences 

 were at work, has suffered the fate of Steller's Sea Cow 

 (Rhytina stellert\ which in the course of less than thirty 

 years (between 1741 and 1768) was totally extirpated, simply 

 because it formed a convenient food for the hunters and 

 traders of Bering's Island. 



