The causes of extinction may be various but in the main, as has been said, the active disturbing factor is man, and as one looks through the list, the losses of the last 200 years are large in proportion to those of the previous 10,000 years.
Changing climate is an immensely important mover of species and when climate changes in a relatively small island such as Britain, extermination is often the fate of land mammals which cannot readily adapt themselves. Again, if man is present and the animal of fair size, he may speed the influence of climate.
The lemming and the northern rat-vole may be taken as examples of changing climate being the dominant factor in exterminations in the Highlands and in the country as a whole. They must have disappeared with the advent of the warmer Atlantic climate and the extension of forest growth. Vestigial arctic climates such as that of the 4,000-foot plateaux of the Cairngorms have been insufficient to maintain the lemming, which occurs in similar country in Norway.
The giant Irish elk (Megaceros hibernicus) disappeared in prehistoric days also, probably before the advent of man. Climate was an active factor, but the organism itself was heading for disaster. The biological principle of heterogonic growth was at work in extravagant fashion. The evolution of antler form and weight had no particular relation to function, but was a concomitant of increasing body size and followed a different growth rate. The great annual drain on the constitution of the Irish elk, of growing 80–90 pounds of bone tissue, was too much in an age which was changing from that of the rich pasturage of the Pleistocene. Whereas the red deer grew smaller in every way, and thus adapted itself, the giant deer apparently died in all its glory. It is thought that the northern lynx persisted in the Northern Highlands until man came, but soon afterwards it became extinct. The species was probably in decline with the rise of the warm Atlantic climate, but was given the final push into extinction by Neolithic man. Bones of the northern lynx were found near the hearths in the limestone cave of Allt na Uamh near Inchnadamph, Sutherland. Ritchie says this is the one appearance of the species in Scottish history.
The brown bear was probably never a numerous species in the Highlands. The assumption of its disappearance in the 9th–10th centuries means that man must have been responsible, for climatic change had long ceased in its more violent forms and the destruction of the forests had scarcely begun.
The reindeer inhabited the Northern Highlands well into the historic period. The rise of the Atlantic climate may have reduced its original numbers, but had it not been for man’s influence it would probably have survived as the woodland type of the species. The destruction of the forests must have greatly restricted its range and finally its extermination must have been due to direct hunting. The Orkneyinga Saga mentions the hunting of the reindeer by Rognvald and Harald of Orkney, and the date assigned to the event is about the middle of the 12th century, but the species was extant later than this.
The elk (or moose) persisted in the north until rather later than the period of the brochs, defensive stone towers which were built about the 10th century, and given up when the Norse raids developed into conquest, i.e. about A.D. 1000–1100. Man, by direct hunting and the indirect means of destruction of forest which had then begun, was the cause of its disappearance by about A.D. 1300. Legends of a large dark species of deer are common in the Highlands.
The beaver was found in the Highlands until the 15th–16th centuries, Hector Boece mentioning its existence about Loch Ness, and its being hunted for its skin.
We may consider next a group of three diverse creatures which are extinct as wild animals of the type they were in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, at which time they disappeared; but which still lived on in domesticated forms or crosses with other domesticated stocks. The wild boar would be found wherever there were oak woods and would impoverish the flora therein by its constant delving. Its domesticated descendants persisted in the West Highlands and Islands until the middle of the 19th century, at which time swine ceased to be kept as a general practice. The conversion of the people to an extreme type of Presbyterianism engendered a Judaic attitude to the pig, and numbers fell away rapidly after the 19th century conversions. Any fresh pigs to come in were of the improved type from England, where the quick-fattening Chinese pig was altering the form of the old “razorbacks.” The great wild ox or Urus, surely the most magnificent member of the northern fauna, also disappeared through hunting and the clearing of the forest, but its blood may be presumed still to run in the veins of the West Highland breed of cattle (Plate 9). The Highlands also had their wild ponies which were truly wild and not feral. Cossar Ewart has pointed out that these ponies lacked callosities on the hind legs. Hector Boece mentions the ponies in the same passage as that in which he records the beavers of Loch Ness. The Scottish wild horse received crosses of Norse blood, and later of Arab, so that the Highland pony of to-day (Plate IX) has at least some claims to represent the indigenous stock.
The white cattle with black hooves, muzzles, eyes and ears remain to us to-day in a few herds in large parks. They are rather poor creatures, having been greatly inbred through lack of numbers. None of them is in the Highlands. Cattle of this colouring arise from time to time, and I believe that it would not be difficult to build up a herd of strong-coated white cattle with black points from the existing cattle stocks of the Highlands and Islands. Similarly with the ponies, we could find a few Celtic ponies (Equus caballus celticus) cropping up as segregates from the Hebridean herds, and build up a stud of them. These two species would be an asset to a future wild-life reserve in the Highlands.
The story of the wolf in the Highlands is important because this animal was responsible for a good deal of the later history of the destruction of the forests. Clearance of the forest by burning was doubtless the easiest way of restricting the wolf’s range. The last wolf of Scotland was killed by one Macqueen on the lands of Mackintosh of Mackintosh, Inverness-shire, in 1743. Passage through the Northern and Central Highlands in the 16th century was hazardous enough for hospices or “spittals” to be set up where the benighted traveller could rest in safety. Wolves were plentiful and hungry enough to cause people in the Highland areas to bury their dead on islands offshore or in lochs. Examples of such islands for which this tradition exists are Handa, Sutherland; Tanera, N.W. Ross; and Inishail, Loch Awe, Argyll. A detailed account of the wolf in Scotland may be found in Harting’s British Animals Extinct within Historic Times (1880).
Only one mammal has become extinct in the Highlands in the 20th century, though several have come near extinction in our day and have then rallied. The polecat has gone from Scotland though it still exists in moderate numbers in mid-Wales. The intensity of game preservation and the skill of Scottish gamekeepers in trapping are doubtless responsible. Even as I write, Highland fox-hunting organizations have expressed “satisfaction” at kills not only of foxes but badgers, otters, weasels and stoats. These same men will soon be yapping their dissatisfaction at plagues of voles and rabbits and calling on that universal Aunt Sally of Scotland, the Department of Agriculture, “to do something.”
From the animals and dates mentioned so far in this chapter, we gather that several mammals disappeared between the years A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1743. Birds were more fortunate, but their turn was to come with the improvement and lightening of the fowling-piece, the rise of game preservation and the spread of land reclamation. Almost as the last wolf howled in the Highlands, extermination of certain birds began. The first were the crane and the bittern which went in the 18th century, partly by direct hunting for feathers and food, but mainly through draining the marshes for land reclamation. It may be said, incidentally, that this characteristic 18th-century movement for draining was also responsible for the extirpation of malaria from Scotland.
The absolute extinction of the great auk is a story so well known that there is no need to recount more of it than the gradual diminution on St. Kilda as a breeding species during the 17th and 18th centuries. By 1840, when the last great auk was caught and killed on St. Kilda, the captors were unaware of its identity, and the bird was actually killed because of their fear of it. Where there is no written word current, tradition is unsure in its action.
All
