EFFECTS UPON ANIMAL LIFE ' 349 



destruction of the forest, which entailed the disturbance 

 and disappearance of its haunts. Apart from the suggestive- 

 ness of its reduction in numbers and steady restriction to- 

 wards the wilder and more wooded areas to the north, 

 during periods when history tells of the woeful devastation 

 of Scottish woods, the history of the Elk in Europe adds 

 confirmatory evidence ; for it stands in the nature of a 

 "control" upon the events in Scotland. Julius Caesar 

 mentions the Elk, along with the Reindeer and the Urus, 

 as inhabiting the Hercynian forest of Germany during his 

 campaigns in that country and in Gaul. During the third 

 century of our era it spread over all the forest-clad parts of 

 Germany. Here it was that the "dowghtie Siegfried" of the 

 twelfth century Nibelungenlied "slowe a Wisent [Bison] and 

 an Elk." For many hundreds of years the great woods of 

 the Black Forest and other areas remained almost unaffected 

 by man's destruction, affording a safe preserve for the wild 

 creatures of the woods. And with the survival of the forest 

 the Elk survived; for in Saxony an Elk was slain so recently 

 as 1746, and in Silesia it lingered until 1776. Long before 

 the Elk disappeared from the forests of Central Europe, a 

 new factor, as potent for destruction as the dissolution of the 

 woodland, had arisen the invention of powder and the gun. 

 It is worth remembering that although the Elk is now- 

 regarded as a northern animal, the German forests in which 

 it lived only two and a half centuries ago, lie in a latitude 

 far south of Scotland an indication that climate was not a 

 prime factor in determining its disappearance in North 

 Britain. 



In Central Europe, the forests remained and the Elk 

 survived : in Britain the forests were laid low and the Elk, 

 having been gradually driven to the northern confines of 

 Scotland, disappeared. 



CONCLUSIONS REGARDING THE RACE OF DEER 



These summaries of the stories of such Deer as certainly 

 survived in Scotland at the arrival of man show in different 

 degree the stages of a general decadence. The Roe Deer 

 became reduced in numbers and limited in range, the 

 numbers and the range of the Red Deer became contracted 

 and itself underwent a marked physical degeneration, the 



