IX. i 

 A RETROSPECT 



MAN'S INFLUENCE A DEVELOPING FACTOR 



IT is strikingly apparent that the influence of man upon 

 animal life has not been a constant factor throughout. But 

 this is little to be wondered at, when account is made of 

 the changes which have taken place in man's mental attitude 

 towards animals and his consequent relationship to them. 

 Primitive peoples are creatures of the wilds, and fall in 

 with Nature's ways. They kill where food or safety de- 

 mands, and are killed by the other wild creatures almost 

 on an equal footing. There is yet no enmity between man 

 and the beast ; indeed a suggestion of identity with the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms pervades the simple peoples, 

 so that they see in birds and beasts, in trees and flowers, 

 creatures like unto themselves in essence, which in the 

 myths and folk-tales share their own thoughts and feelings 

 and speech. So when a particular animal comes to be 

 selected to represent their families or tribes, the race of this 

 totem animal becomes as their own race, to be protected in 

 life and avenged in death. 



In such conditions man was almost as much a part of wild 

 nature as the beasts themselves ; he made clearings in the 

 forest, but the clearings he made for his settlements nature 

 healed in a few years after he had forsaken them ; he slew 

 animals, but the thought of destruction other than for his 

 own food or clothing or protection or such simple necessity 

 had not entered his mind. 



So we find that the faunas of the older human stages 

 were those least influenced by man. The simple hunters and 

 fishermen of the Old Stone Age left little permanent trace 

 upon their contemporaries of the wood and plain. But with 

 the passing of years man left his place in the woods to 

 seek a place in the sun, and gained in humanity just as he 

 raised his head above wild nature's level. Now began an 

 antagonism to nature uncontrolled, that has grown and 



