PRESERVATION OF ANIMALS. 105 
« A Buzzard was shot at Hart, near Hartlepool,” August, 1861. 
Can nothing be done by this Society, which is daily becoming 
more powerful in numbers, influence, and scientific attainments, 
for the protection of the feathered strangers ? 
The Fauna of our islands is notoriously small; in fact, the late 
lamented Hugh Miller says, “ our present fauna is the fragment 
of one once much more magnificent.” Associated with species 
which still exist in the less cultivated parts of this country, such 
as the badger, the fox, the wild cat, the roe, and the red deer, we 
find the remains of great animals whose congeners must now be 
sought for in the intertropical regions. 
Associated, too, with the works of man of the earlier periods, 
we find in our mosses equally suggestive remains of extir- 
pated, and in some cases of extinct animals, such as gigantic 
skulls and horns of the Bos primigenius, or Native Ox, and of the 
Cervus megaceros, or Irish Elk, with the skeletons of wolves, 
of beavers, of reindeer, of wild horses and bears. 
We find it stated by Hector Boece in his history, that there 
were beavers living among our highland glens even in his day, 
as late as the year 1526; but there rests a shadow of doubt on 
the statement. It is unquestionable, however, that the Gaelic 
name of the creature Lesleathin, or broad tail, still survives; and 
equally certain that when Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
journeyed into Wales towards the close of the twelfth century 
to incite the Welsh to join in the Crusades, the beaver was en- 
gaged in building its coffer dams and log houses in the river 
Teivey, Cardiganshire.* The wolf and wild horse main- 
tained themselves, in at least the northern part of the island, 
for several centuries later. 
Our present fauna, however small, is unfortunately becoming 
less. Birds once common, and which would still be so, but for 
ignorant gamekeepers and thoughtless gunners, are ruthlessly 
* See a valuable paper by Dr. Wilson, in the Transactions ofthe Berwickshire Club, 
yol. iv. p. 81, in which it is stated, that ‘“‘ Among the tolls licensed to be levied at New- 
castle-upon-Tyne, in the time of Henry I., we find the tymbra beveriorum fixed at four- 
pence; and this, it is important to note, appears to have been an export duty.—Secs. 
St, TN Lis GL 
WOig Wig AEG ib) 
