A RETROSPECT 489 



killing of the larger beasts and birds of prey which shared 

 the same food supply, and because of the actual increase of 

 its prey, owing to game preservation and to the increase of 

 food through cultivation and the accumulation of garbage. 

 The final effect upon the Stoat's welfare depends upon the 

 tilting of the balance to one side or the other. Other animals 

 are subject to similar diverse and contradictory influences 

 it is seldom that the influence of man follows an undeviating 

 path. 



INFLUENCES TENDING TO MODIFY STRUCTURES AND HABITS 



There is a third indication in the history of a species 

 which points to adverse influences a decline in physique. 

 Where this degeneracy has taken place dependent upon 

 changes in environment caused by man, the structural 

 change may be attributed to his agency. Between pre- 

 historic times and the present day, the weight and complexity 

 of the antlers of Stags have undergone an extraordinary 

 decadence. This I have endeavoured to trace to the adverse 

 influences which have driven Red Deer, from the forest which 

 is their natural home, to the uncongenial bleakness of the 

 moors and mountain sides, where food is less luxuriant and 

 where shelter from hard weather is less perfect. But man 

 destroyed the forest and drove the Deer to the wastes, and 

 to him therefore can be traced the new moulding of the 

 Deer's antlers. 



It is not only in the alteration of characteristic features 

 that the influence of man can be traced, for it seems also to 

 be exhibited in an actual reduction in size of body amongst 

 four-footed beasts. In a country such as ours where domestic 

 animals and the acts of man have usurped and destroyed the 

 food supplies of wild creatures, this reduction is probably of 

 a much more general nature than one would suppose, but 

 many careful observations of the refuse of the prehistoric 

 settlements and other deposits must yet be made, before the 

 size relationship between the old and the modern representa- 

 tives of mammals can be determined generally. This we can 

 say, however, that of the survivors of the race of native 

 Scottish Deer, one, the Scottish Red Deer, has decreased in 

 size by about one third since the days of Neolithic man ; while 



