694 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
we are indebted for all this information often held views of things 
seen and unseen superstitious enough, none who know their works 
will deny. These, however, did not overshadow their great attain- 
ments. They lay alongside of them, and thus, by contrast, set 
them in greater relief. Many examples might be given of the deep 
indebtedness of present students of science to these literary records 
of the far past. Some of the sources of the information we are 
in quest of may be named. Leaving out of view what may be 
called the literature of the chartularies, we have Adamnan’s Vita 
Sancti Columbce, a.d. 697 ; Boece’s Scotorum Historia a Prima 
Gentis Origine , a.d. 1526 ; Lesley’s De Origine Moribus et Rebus 
Gestis Scotorum , a.d. 1578; Sibbald’s Scotia Illustrata , sice Pro- 
dr omus Historia Naturalis, a.d. 1684; Gordon’s Itinerary, a.d. 
1726; and later, Chalmers’s Caledonia, Ure’s History of Ruther- 
glen , Pococke’s Travels in Scotland, Pennant’s Travels in Scotland , 
Fleming’s British Animals, etc. In them and kindred works 
much light is shed on the mammals of those times by giving promi- 
nence to their environments, physical and vital. These sources of 
information were referred to in my last paper, and instances illus- 
trative of their value were quoted. They deserve to be made more 
of than they are by recent writers, were it for no other end than 
making them a part of common culture. The power to utilise 
them would itself imply scientific attainments, because such records 
of the remote past owe much of their value to the fact that they 
shed reflex light on man’s social, industrial, and often even artistic 
condition at the time; in a word, on stages of civilisation, — the 
outcome of men in touch with and able to control their environ- 
ments. 
In the geology of the surface — in superficial strata — we have 
another source of information regarding the natural history of 
pre-historic and early historic species. Here, however, very 
much depends on the qualifications of the student. If a special- 
ist, say, in any one vertebrate family of organisms, his descriptive 
identification of species will be perfectly trustworthy in that 
family of fishes or reptiles, birds or mammals. But some of the 
most important points touching it, may, very often do, require more 
than a general knowledge of quaternary strata, whether the speci- 
mens are geological or archseological, or both in one. The occurrence 
