BRITISH POSTGLACIAL & RECENT DEPOSITS. 427 



frons, wild-boar, red-deer (often of great size), fallow-deer, roe- 

 buck, elk or moose-deer, Irish deer, reindeer, horse, dog, pig, 

 sheep, goat, wild-cat, wolf, fox, and beaver. Some of these animals 

 were extirpated in historic times, and many of them have, of 

 course, been greatly restricted in their range. The beaver was 

 still a native of Scotland so late as the end of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, for its skins are mentioned among Scottish exports in an 

 Act of David I. for fixing the rate of custom duties. But it had 

 apparently become extinct shortly afterwards, for in a similar 

 Act passed in June in 1424, martens, otters, polecats, and foxes 

 are specified, but beavers are never mentioned. 1 On the strength 

 of a passage in the Orhneyinga Saga, it is supposed that the rein- 

 deer survived in Caithness down to the year 1159. Its remains, 

 however, occur very rarely in Scottish postglacial and recent 

 deposits. Those of the elk (Cervus alecs) are also somewhat 

 rare, but they have been found more frequently than those of 

 the reindeer. Eemains of the Irish deer (0. megaceros) are still 

 more uncommon, having been met with only once in deposits of 

 postglacial age. Both the elk and the Irish deer must have 

 disappeared in prehistoric times, and notwithstanding the pass- 

 age in the Orhneyinga Saga, it seems unlikely that the reindeer 

 survived in Scotland to so late a period as the twelfth century. 2 

 The wolf was still a native of the Highlands in the seventeenth 

 century, the last survivor having been killed in 1680. The great 

 Caledonian bull, which it is supposed by some still survives in the 

 degenerate cattle of Hamilton Park, etc., was probably the direct 

 descendant of the large Bos primigenius, and the long-fronted 

 ox (B. longifrons) also survives in our domestic breeds. The 

 wild-boar was hunted in historic times, and was killed by that 



1 Hector Boece (end of fifteenth century) states that in his day the beaver 

 abounded ( " incomparabile numero ") in Loch Ness, and Bellenden, his translator 

 (probably about 1536), says of the same district that there were " mony wyld hors, 

 and amang yame ar mony niartrikis (pine-martins), levers, quhitredis (weasels), 

 and toddis (foxes), the furiings and skynnis of thayme are coft with great price 

 amang uncouth (foreign) merchandis. " — Croniklis of Scotland. For an interesting 

 account of the Beaver in Britain, see Trails. Wernerian Soc, vol. iii. p. 207. 



2 For accounts of Reindeer, Elk, and Irish Deer in Scotland, see Dr. J. A. 

 Smith in Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. vii. 1868-69, vol. ix. 1870-71. 



