482 CHAINS OF CIRCUMSTANCE 



certain favoured creatures, it intensified the warfare against 

 others. Yet over all is the influence of the spread of culti- 

 vation and of the care of flocks and herds, ever increasing 

 in its power and in its enmity towards wild creatures, till, 

 reinforced by the invention of gunpowder and guns, in 

 the centuries following upon the sixteenth it swept away a 

 great remnant of the original fauna, blotting out from the 

 land such as the Wolf, the Beaver, the Great Bustard, 

 the Crane and the Bittern, the White-tailed Eagle, the 

 Goshawk, the Kite and the Osprey, and driving into corners 

 of the shrinking forests, or to the wilds, such as the Wild 

 Cat, the Pine Marten, the Golden Eagle, the Raven, the 

 Carrion Crow, and other foes of domesticated things. 



Lastly the development of the means and ease of travel- 

 ling, the spread of commerce, and the rapidity of ocean 

 transit have removed almost the last shackles from man's 

 influence, throwing the world at the mercy of a power that 

 heretofore has been limited by nature's barriers. 



A CONTRAST THE WAYS OF NATURE AND MAN 



One is tempted to contrast the ways of Nature and 

 Man in their bearing on animal life. A little consideration 

 of the examples given in the preceding pages will show 

 how different in degree are the methods by which natural 

 processes and man's direct intervention reach the same 

 ends. 



Nature may indeed destroy by cataclysm, else how can 

 we account for the shoals of dead fish, which died simul- 

 taneously in inland waters covering, million of years ago, the 

 spot where Caithness now is, and which became embedded 

 in layers of the Old Red Sandstone Period. In our own 

 day the eruptions of submarine volcanoes work such havoc. 

 But as a rule Nature's method is different. She exterminates 

 an animal : long she seems to ponder over the process, 

 slowly the conditions creep in which render existence more 

 difficult, time gives many opportunities for changing a 

 habit, even for modifying a structure, so that new adaptation 

 may turn aside the threat of extinction only to incompetence 

 of adjustment does Nature meet out its reward. 



But Man is still " Nature's insurgent son," her methods 



