INCREASE OF ANIMAL LIFE 391 



in groups of three years for the sake of eliminating extreme 

 annual fluctuations. It is to be seen that a steady increase is 

 made throughout a century distinguished for its advance in 

 agriculture ; and further that the increase, which makes its 

 first marked step shortly after the year 1840, when "notable 

 improvements " in agricultural methods had been initiated, 

 swells by leaps and bounds during the period following 1853, 

 which Mr R. Prothero (Lord Ernie) has described as the 

 " Golden Age " of British agriculture. 



This close correlation between agricultural progress and 

 numbers of Rabbits was, of course, not confined to the 

 Lowlands nor to the statistics of the Dumfries Fair. It was 

 probably universal throughout Scotland, and affords a simple 

 explanation of the extraordinary increase in the annual 

 slaughter of Rabbits on an estate in agricultural Perthshire, 

 as revealed by quotations from the old Game Book, in the 

 Field of 21 November, 1908. On this estate only 2309 

 Rabbits were killed in the decade 1824-1833; during 1834- 

 1843 tne bag jumped to 21,431 ; and in 1844-1853 it reached 

 51,932. Thereafter Rabbits became such a pest that special 

 efforts were made to keep them down, with the result that 

 the stock of Rabbits was so reduced that the continuity of the 

 statistics was disturbed. But the significance of the history is 

 clear the increases in numbers were contemporaneous with 

 notable periods of agricultural activity. 



The numbers of Hares as well as of Rabbits responded 

 to the agricultural advance of the ''Golden Age," as a glance 

 at a more detailed diagram of the statistics of the Dumfries 

 Fur Market (p. 167) will show. 



Millions of Brown Rats and of House Mice depend upon 

 the stores of the granaries of the United Kingdom, where the 

 damage done by the former has been estimated at upwards 

 of fifteen million pounds sterling a year. Field Mice and 

 Harvest Mice depend directly upon the products of the field, 

 and had it not been for the bountiful supplies of cultivated 

 areas, we should probably never have had experience of 

 such a Vole plague as that which devastated many parts of 

 the Lowlands in the early nineties of last century. 



No body of animals, however, has benefited from the 

 development of agriculture so much as Insects. Cultiva- 

 tion has created insect pests by the score, for there is 



