486 CHAINS OF CIRCUMSTANCE 



keeping up the stocks of many game-birds which adverse 

 conditions might have brought near the vanishing point, 

 and in recent years it has certainly been instrumental in 

 increasing the numbers of several rare and of many inter- 

 esting and useful birds. 



Apart from increase in sheer weight of numbers, the 

 animal life in Scotland has been varied in kind by the 

 introduction from abroad of creatures which have found 

 climate and food suitable for their firm establishment. 

 Amongst these naturalized aliens, domestic animals are 

 the chief, not only because of their numbers, but also 

 on account of the pressure they have exerted upon the 

 native fauna ; for with man the welfare of his stock has 

 always had first consideration. How great this indirect 

 pressure has been we can scarcely realize, but now and 

 again we have caught glimpses of its power, as when the 

 development of sheep pasturage led to the destruction of 

 tracts of forest land in the Highlands as well as in the Low- 

 lands, banishing their tenants and in the latter district 

 finally driving the Roe and the Red Deer to extermination. 



How could it be otherwise when new places and new 

 food supplies have had to be found for the millions of 

 domesticated animals man has imposed upon the country ? 

 We are apt to forget that by nothing short of a miracle 

 could 8,635,918 foreigners, however desirable, be added to 

 the fauna of a country without disturbing the food and 

 dwelling arrangements of the aboriginals. But this number 

 includes only the larger domestics Horses, Cattle, Sheep 

 and Pigs 1 inhabiting Scotland in 1916, and the wonder is 

 that they have found places without entirely dispossessing 

 the old fauna, for, were they equally distributed throughout 

 the land, on barren mountain-top, as well as in fertile plain, 

 they would represent, roughly, an addition of one animal to 

 every two acres. But under natural conditions each Red 

 Deer requires at least 18 acres of moderately good "forest" 

 to keep it in heart ! The domestic animals have, it is true, 

 enormously affected the wild fauna ; but nevertheless man 

 has accomplished the miracle of heavily overloading the 

 scale without entirely upsetting the balance of feeding the 



1 The numbers were horses, 207,290; cattle, 1,226,374; sheep, 7,055,864; 

 pigs, 146,390. 



