viii PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



CHAPTER II.— HISTORIC MAMMALIA OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 



IRELAND. 



TJie Historic Starting '-point — British Wild Animals — British Domestic Animals — 

 The English Breeds of Oxen — Tlie Romano- Celtic or Brit- Welsh Breed — Animals 

 eaten by the Romano-Celts or Brit-Welsh — Principal Animals in Britain at 

 beginning of Historic Period — Physiography of Britain — The Wild and 

 Domestic Animals of Ireland — The Principal Mammalia of Britain and Ireland — 

 Conclusion. 



The wild animals afford a valuable insight into the physical condition of the country 

 which they inhabit : they cannot compete with man in the struggle for life, and 

 if their environment changes they must either die out or become changed in a 

 corresponding degree. Consequently they are of great interest to the student of history, 

 since they enable him to form some idea of the relation of cultivated to uncultivated 

 lands, as well as to the physicist, since the change in the mammal fauna, which in some 

 cases cannot be assigned to the hand of man, implies a corresponding change in the 

 geography and climate. In the present and the succeeding chapters we shall examine 

 the larger and more important species which have inhabited Europe from the beginning 

 of history to the present day, and we shall see what inferences may be drawn from the 

 gradual restriction of their areas. Among the domestic animals, also, the two breeds of 

 oxen, which are especially interesting from an historical point of view, must not be omitted. 



The Historic Starting-point. 



It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define with accuracy the point where 

 legend shades off into history ; but it will be convenient, for the purposes of this 

 work, to draw the line at the first beginning of a connected and continuous narrative, 

 rather than at the first isolated notice of any given country. If we accept this definition, 

 the history of Northern France cannot be said to begin earlier than the campaigns 

 of Caesar, b. c. 55, who may justly be termed the first historian of Northern Germany 

 and Britain. In Southern Gaul the founding of Massilia by the Phocseans (b.c. 539) is 

 the earliest record, but we are ignorant of the sequence of events in the centuries which 

 elapsed between that date and the treaty which the Phocaean colonists made with the 



