Note 224 — Chapter I · —INTRODUCTION OF METALS.

Ellis's Specimens. The abundance of wild beasts and game of all kinds in the Caledonian forests is frequently alluded to. Boece describes "gret plente of haris, hartis, hindis, dayis, rais, wolffis, wild hors, and toddis." (Bellenden's Boece. Cosmographe, chap. xi.) The following curious enumeration in Gordon's History of the House of Sutherland, (fol. p. 3,) written about 1630, furnishes a tolerably extensive list of wild natives of Sutherland even in the seventeenth century:—"All these forrests and schases are verie profitable for feiding of bestiall, and delectable for hunting. They are full of reid deir and roes, woulffs, foxes, wyld catts, brocks, skuyrrells, whittrets, weasels, otters, martrixes, hares, and fumarts. In these forrests, and in all this province, ther is great store of partriges, pluivers, capercalegs, blackwaks, murefowls, heth-hens, swanes, bewters, turtledoves, herons, dowes, steares or stirlings, lair-igigh or knag, (which is a foull lyk vnto a paroket or parret, which maks place for her nest with her beck in the oak trie,) duke, draig, widgeon, teale, wildgouse, ringouse, routs, whaips, shot-whaips, woodcok, larkes, sparrowes, snyps, blakburds or osills, meweis, thrushes, and all other kinds of wildfowle and birds, which ar to be had in any pairt of this kingdome. Ther is not one strype in all these forrests that wants trouts and other sorts of fishes.... Ther is vpon these rivers, and vpon all the cost of Southerland, a great quantitie of pealoks, sealghes or sealls, and sometymes whaills of great bignes, with all sorts of shell fish, and dyvers kynds of sea-foull." When we remember that this ample inventory is of a late date, and lacks not only the Caledonian bull, the elk, and "the wild-bore, killed by Gordoun, who for his valour and great manhood was verie intire with King Malcolme-Kean-Moir," but also, in all probability, many more of the older prizes of the chase, we can readily perceive the abundant stores that lay within reach of the thinly-peopled districts of the primitive era. One of the most interesting of the extinct animals of Scotland, on many accounts, is the beaver, (Castor Europæus,) already referred to among the mammals of the primeval transition. Its remains have been discovered under circumstances indicative of equal antiquity with the extinct mammoth, (Owen, p. 191.) But their most frequent situation is at the bottom of the peat-bog; as in the Newbury peat-valley, where they were found twenty feet below the present surface, associated with the remains of the wild-boar, roebuck, goat, deer, and wolf. Fine specimens of a skull, under-jaw, and haunch bone, found in Perthshire, and now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, have been made the subject of a valuable memoir by Dr. P. Neill, a Fellow of the Society, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, (vol. i. p. 183, and Wern. Mem. vol. iii. p. 207.) Dr. Neill, Professor Fleming, and subsequent writers, including Professor Owen, in referring to the historical notices of the beaver, remark on the absence of any mention of such an animal in the Scottish public records. This, however, is an error. In an Act of David I. fixing the rate of custom-duties, beavers' skins are mentioned among the Scottish exports, along with those of the fox, the weasel, the martin, the wild cat, the ferret, &c.—"Of Peloure.—Of a tymmyr of skynnis of toddis, quhytredis, mertrikis, cattis, beueris, sable firettis, or swylk vthyr of ilk tymmyr at þe outpassing, iiij ᵭ. Of þe tymmer of skurel, ij ᵭ.," &c., (Act. Parl. Scot. vol. i. p. 303.) Dr. Neill has pointed out the interesting fact, that the Scottish Highlanders still retain a peculiar Gaelic name for the beaver, Dobran losleathan, the broad-tailed otter. By the Welsh it is called Llosdlydan, and Pennant refers to waters in the principality still bearing the name of the Beaver Lake.