A RETROSPECT 481 



intensified with each new stage of culture. The first great 

 step was taken by Neolithic man when he brought creatures 

 of the wild under the yoke, and cleared the ground of its 

 natural plants for the sake of his cultivated grains. A 

 classification expressive of his new relationship to nature 

 was emphasized : plants were useful, to be preserved, or 

 "weeds" to be rooted out; animals likewise fell into the 

 categories of good and bad, and the latter, mainly the 

 beasts and birds of prey, became marked for persecution 

 everywhere and at all seasons. 



In spite of this new rivalry, Neolithic man, and even 

 his successors of the Bronze and Iron Ages, left few marks 

 of their passage upon the fauna of Scotland ; their weapons 

 were primitive and their needs were simple. It is a remark- 

 able fact that of all the creatures which Neolithic man found 

 inhabiting the forests and moors of Scotland on his settle- 

 ment there some 7000 years before the opening of the 

 Christian era, only four, so far as we can judge, failed to 

 carry on their race to the dawn of Scottish history in the first 

 century of our era the Giant Fallow Deer, the Lemming, 

 the Northern Lynx, and the Northern or Rat Vole and of 

 these it is doubtful if the Giant Fallow Deer (Megaceros 

 giganteus] had not died out even before man's arrival, while 

 the remainder are Arctic or northern animals upon which 

 Scotland's fluctuations of climate must have told with special 

 severity. 



Nevertheless in domesticating wild animals, Neolithic 

 man set in motion a force which directly and indirectly has 

 been the most potent factor in changing the old order of 

 nature and setting in its place the new order of mankind. 

 In Scotland the intensity of this force increased after 

 the Roman conquest of the Lowlands and the incoming of 

 Christianity. The greater necessity for food and fire for an 

 increasing population led to the spread of agriculture and 

 the destruction of the forest, so that about the tenth century 

 several interesting and long familiar animals had disappeared 

 or were on the verge of extinction, among them the Brown 

 Bear, the Reindeer and the Elk. 



The introduction of a new factor the active encourage- 

 ment and protection of certain animals by law cut both 

 ways, for while it helped to make secure the position of 



R. 31 



