The changes produced by man in the indigenous fauna and flora of Great Britain : a lecture, delivered in the City Hall, Glasgow, January 9th, 1879 / by G. Rolleston.

  • George Rolleston
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The changes produced by man in the indigenous fauna and flora of Great Britain : a lecture, delivered in the City Hall, Glasgow, January 9th, 1879 / by G. Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    man such an animal as the Kyloe—the small, stunted, unaggressive, placid breed of cattle so familiar to us all here? Those cattle were large because, if a small bull encountered a pack, however small, of wolves, it was pulled down, and there was an end of its existence, and of the chance which it had of propagating small animals like itself. Let me here mention what strikes a Southerner— it is that your Cheviot breed of sheep should be able to live out upon the hills. I have seen in the middle part of Northumbria this hornless breed of sheep standing even this weather, and having no protection but sheds and shanties. But the sight of such a , flock in such a locality shows also another result of man’s action, viz., that there can be no wolves there; otherwise such a breed of sheep could not exist, and form an object in the landscape, as we see them doing. Such a sight shows that you are living in a country more entirely reduced under man’s dominion than is continental Europe. A mere picture of a flock of hornless sheep, upon the top of a hill, in a wild country, with woodlands, would tell a naturalist that you had extirpated from that region all the wild and dangerous animals. Modern civilisation, by extirpating beasts of prey, has rendered it possible for us to leave herds and flocks of small oxen and sheep out in the open. In times of ancient savagery, in which packs of wolves held their own, none but big animals would be so left. In those times also, the country was not mapped out by “ formal props of restless owner- rship,” and these wild animals had a much wider range, and having better pasturage grew larger accordingly. It is clear that both causes—the presence of wild carnivora, and the absence of enclosures—must have co-operated in increasing the size of the graminivorous beasts. But when the early man had caught a young calf it was necessarily separated from its mother, which would not readily acquiesce in the loss of liberty, and, as a con- sequence of the separation, it would have to go without its regular and proper and naturally supplied ration of milk. It is well known that if a child is starved it rarely recovers the loss, but usually remains stunted throughout life. An analogous or identical process we can see going on in India now, where the buffalo calves of the tame buffalo are deprived of the regular supplies of milk which their mothers would have furnished, and become stunted, the Hindoo naturally preferring to reserve what milk he can obtain for himself and his family. The domestic buffalo is thus a smaller animal than the wild stock to which it belongs, this wild stock having necessarily to be large and powerful
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