BRITISH WILD ANIMALS. ix 



Romans b. c. 218. The history of Spain may be said to begin with the founding 

 of Gadeira, b. c. 1200 (?), by the Phoenicians; but between that enormously remote and 

 uncertain date and the conquests of the Carthaginians in Spain, b. c. 241, we have no 

 historical trustworthy record. In both these cases the latter date rather than the former 

 will be taken. To attempt to define the relation of history to legend in ancient Greece 

 and Rome would be outside the scope of this work, and it is much safer, in the present 

 state of our knowledge, to leave it uncertain. 



We shall begin with the Historic Mammalia of Great Britain and Ireland. 



Wild Animals living in Britain in the Historic Period. 



The utmost limits of history in Great Britain cannot be extended farther back than 

 the brief and transient invasion of Julius Caesar ; and, indeed, of the interval between 

 that event and the subjugation of the country under Claudius we know scarcely 

 anything. 



Our wild animals live for the most part on sufferance, and are so wtll known that it is 

 scarcely necessary to treat them with more than a passing allusion. The common rat 

 (Mus decumanus), which had passed into Southern Russia by the year 1727, from Asia, 

 arrived in Britain certainly before the year 1730, and has since nearly exterminated the 

 black species {Mus rattus)} It is the only wild animal which is known to have invaded 

 Europe in the Historic age. The fox, protected by the love of hunting, is very 

 generally distributed ; the badger is by no means rare, although from its nocturnal 

 habits and its caution, it is seldom seen ; and the wild cat lingers still in South Wales, 

 near Tenby, and in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and is not very rare in Scotland. 

 The otter is now comparatively scarce in the rivers, but is widely spread. Besides the 

 common hare, the Alpine or white species, Lepus variabilis, lives in the Highlands of 

 Scotland, seldom descending into the valleys, and is a living monument of the period 

 of intense cold in Britain. The red deer is wild only in the Highlands and in Exmoor 

 forest, while the wild roe is only to be found in Scotland. All these animals have suffered 

 severely from the competition of the farmer, and to what extent can only be realised by 

 examining the records of some two centuries ago, from which it is clear that the almost 

 chivalrous regard for some of these animals is a product of modern luxury. " The fox," 

 writes Lord Macaulay, " in the year 1641 was considered a mere nuisance, whose life is 

 now, in many counties, held almost as sacred as that'of a human being. Oliver Saint- 

 John told the Long Parliament that Stafford was to be considered, not as a stag or a 

 hare, to whom some law was to be given, but as a fox, who was to be snared by 

 any means, and knocked on the head without pity. This illustration would be by no 

 means a happy one if addressed to country gentlemen of our time ; but in Saint- John's 



1 Pallas Glires 4to. 



B 



