DECREASE OF ANIMAL LIFE 377 



have shared in their decline, though definite statements 

 cannot be made in the absence of early historical refer- 

 ences, which might give a clue to former distribution and 

 abundance ; and who knows but that the frog-haunted 

 swamps of past ages may have afforded sustenance even to 

 the Stork, which Fordun records as having nested upon the 

 Cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh in the year 1416? 



The swamps of the low country are gone, for the marsh 

 lovers "the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried 

 up," and their tenants are exterminated, or have betaken 

 themselves to the moors. New conditions of life have 

 imposed new habits, and I imagine that the annual move- 

 ments of Curlews and other moorland birds from seashore 

 to uplands have been created or at any rate magnified 

 by the removal of the lowland flats and fens, from which 

 the seashore was but a step away. Yet less often than our 

 forefathers did, we hear the welcome calls of the marsh birds, 

 telling by their return that winter has passed and spring- 

 is at hand, as the old south-country rhyme has it, " Whaup, 

 Whimbrel an' Plover, when they whustle the warst o't's 

 over." 



THE INTERFERENCE OF CIVILIZATION 



Not only direct trenching on their favourite sites has 

 influenced the wild creatures, but many of the developments 

 of civilization have affected their numbers. 



DESTRUCTION BY LIGHTHOUSES AND OTHER LIGHTS 



The influence of artificial lights is not of much importance 

 in the ultimate relationships of a fauna, yet it illustrates very 

 effectively the destructive tendency of some of the amenities 

 of our later civilization. Lighthouses and lightships, scat- 

 tered in ever-increasing numbers round the rocky shores of 

 Scotland to guide sailors to safety, lure every year thousands 

 of winged migrants to their doom, in Tennyson's words 



The beacon's blaze allures 



. " The bird of passage till he madly strikes 



Against it, and beats out his weary life. 



The solitary beams seem to possess a fatal attraction for 

 both birds and moths, especially on foggy nights when they 

 are compelled to travel at low altitudes. At such times 



