28 THE BKITISH ISLES. 



songsters is probably a very remote one. Many of those birds are stationary ; 

 others only visit the British Isles during- part of the year. Amongst stationary 

 birds are many sweet songsters — including thrushes, finches, linnets, blackbirds, 

 and skylarks — robins and sparrows, rooks, crows, and starlings, the latter 

 devouring prodigious quantities of slugs, worms, &c., so noxious to the farmer, 

 whilst others render themselves equally useful by keeping within bounds the 

 myriads of insects. In this task thej'' are aided by numerous songsters and 

 other birds which arrive as the heralds of spring, and return to more congenial 

 climates in the fall of the year. Amongst these birds of passage are the swallow, 

 the cuckoo, the martin, the quail, the stork (a very rare visitor), and the nightin- 

 gale, which occasionally extends its wanderings as far as Yorkshire, but never 

 crosses over to Ireland. Other birds, whose breeding-places are in the arctic 

 regions, visit the British Islands in winter. Most prominent among these are 

 fieldfares, woodcocks, snipes, swans, ducks, geose, and a variety of aquatic birds. 

 Amongst game birds the partridge, the black grouse or heath-fowl, and the red 

 grouse or moorfowl are the most common, the first named increasing with extend- 

 ing cultivation, whilst the latter two are confined to the wild moorlands of 

 Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland. The ptarmigan, which had a wide 

 range formerly, occurs now only in the wildest parts of Scotland and in the 

 Hebrides. The pheasant, like most of the domesticated birds, is of foreign origin. 



Birds of prey become scarcer every day, but the golden eagle still frequents 

 the high mountain regions, whilst the sea eagle is common along the western 

 shore, from the Shetland Islands as far as South Wales. 



Frogs and toads abound in certain localities, but reptiles proper are very scarce, 

 being confined to lizards, efts, harmless snakes, and the common viper, or adder, 

 the latter alone being venomous. In Ireland there are no snakes. 



The seas and rivers, as far as they are not polluted by the refuse of factories 

 and towns, abound in fish, Crustacea, and molluscs. Amongst sea fish the most 

 highly valued are the cod, turbot, mackerel, herring, pilchard, sole, and haddock, 

 whilst the rivers and lakes, more especially in Scotland and Ireland, yield salmon, 

 trout, char, and other fish. English oysters were so greatly esteemed in antiquity 

 that they were sent to Rome, and "natives" have lost none of their reputation at 

 the present day. 



Inhabitants. 



Of the earliest history of man as an inhabitant of the British Isles there exist 

 only geological records, and these tend to prove that his first advent dates back to 

 a time antecedent to the great glacial epoch,* but that he returned to more 

 congenial lands as the glaciation proceeded. By degrees he adapted himself to 

 the severity of the climate, and, like the Greenlander of our own time, lived in 

 comparative comfort on the edges of glaciers and snow-fields. That he was a 

 contemporary of the mammoth and other mammals now extinct is sufficiently 

 proved by the discovery of his rude implements associated with the bones of these 

 * Ramsay, " Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain." 



