EFFECTS UPON ANIMAL LIFE 357 



1769. Its extermination is generally set down to about the 

 year 1770. 



Now the Capercaillie is a bird of the forest, without 

 which it could not survive, for although it nests on the 

 ground at the base of trees, it roosts in the branches and 

 feeds upon the tender shoots of the pine. The destruction 

 of the forest, therefore, would tell directly against its welfare, 

 and it is not surprising that it should have gradually dwindled 

 in numbers and that its range should have been slowly but 

 surely curtailed during the many centuries of destruction of 

 the woodland ; until, with the climax of devastation brought 

 about by the great slag-furnaces of the eighteenth century, 

 it should finally have disappeared. 



Just so the destruction of woodland banished the. Caper- 

 caillie from Ireland. 



The reintroduction of the Capercaillie from Scandinavia 

 in 1837 and 1838, and its successful establishment and spread 

 when new woods had arisen to give it shelter and food, have 

 been described in another place (p. 268) and there as here 

 I have depended for records mainly on the excellent and 

 detailed history of the bird in Scotland published in 1879 

 by Dr J. A. Harvie-Brown. 



THE GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER 



It may be said that deliberate destruction by man had 

 much to do with the disappearance of the Capercaillie. 

 I hardly think that its slaughter for food or sport was a sig- 

 nificant element in its extinction, but, nevertheless, it cannot 

 fail to strengthen this account of the influence of the destruc- 

 tion of the forest upon animal life to trace the history of 

 a woodland bird which is free from the animosity of man. 

 Consider, for example, the history of the Great Spotted 

 Woodpecker (Picus major), as a Scottish residenter. Its 

 story, too, has been unravelled by Dr Harvie-Brown. 



There is no reason why, in the old days, the Great Spotted 

 Woodpecker should not have dwelt throughout the Scotland 

 of the great forests. But also there is no reason why a 

 bird of no interest to the hawker or the sportsman should 

 receive the attention of the historian. So no records exist 

 of the occurrence of the Great Spotted Woodpecker in 



