284 DELIBERATE INTRODUCTION OF NEW ANIMALS 



released in London with little success. On account of their 

 interest, Lord Carmichael of Skirling transported Nuthatches 

 from England to southern Scotland, but these importations 

 also left no trace. 



GOLD AND SILVER FISHES 



Nor is there room for doubt that the love of colour has 

 been the secret of the introduction of the Gold and Silver 

 Fishes of the East, not only as tiny captives of the indoor 

 aquarium, but as inhabitants of ornamental and other ponds 

 throughout the country. It can hardly be said that these 

 have become part of the fauna of Britain, yet Goldfishes 

 (Carassiiis auratus), natives of China and Japan, have been 

 established in so many artificial lakes and warm engine-ponds 

 of mills, and multiply so successfully in these sheltered havens, 

 that, like the Peacock, they may be regarded as aliens, which, 

 though they are still clearly foreigners, have nevertheless 

 come to stay. 



On the other hand, there are animals, first brought to 

 this country as objects of interest or amusement, which have 

 so easily settled in the land of their adoption that they have 

 become part and parcel of the native fauna. 



FALLOW DEER 



Take the case of the Fallow Deer (Cervus dama). Fallow 

 Deer, closely related to, if not identical with our present 

 species, inhabited Europe and England in the warmer inter- 

 glacial periods of the Ice Age. Thereafter they seem to have 

 disappeared so completely, as, according to the usual state- 

 ment, to have left no trace in the later deposits of the British 

 Isles. It is possible, however, that, like other harassed wild 

 things, they survived longer than is suspected in the security 

 of the outer islands, for Barry in his History of the Orkney 

 Islands ( 1 805) states, I know not on what authority, that the 

 superficial deposits of Orkney have yielded animals strange 

 to the present day fauna, "such as hares, and several sorts of 

 red and fallow deer, the horns of which have been often dug 

 from the earth in various parts of the country." Nevertheless 

 it is a strange but generally accepted fact that while Red 

 Deer and Roes continued to survive in our land, the Fallow 



