On Some Remains of Scottish Early Post-Pliocene Mammals

Extract

At the meeting of the Society on the 20th February 1893 I had the honour of reading a paper “On the Early History of some Scottish Mammals and Birds.” Perhaps the title both of that paper and of the present should be “Remarks on the Literature associated with some Early Post-Pliocene Mammals.”

The science of a Species means much more than the naming of its several parts by Latin and Greek derivatives. Even as regards these parts, one would like to know something of extinct forms at the time when they had a place among the living, just as, when dealing with recent forms, we find much to shed light on the structure, probable habits, and surroundings, especially of mammals which became extinct in quaternary time. Questions arise that are worth noting, were it for nothing more than to make it clear that the mere obiter dicta even of able and wide-minded experts may often be misleading. The tendency which prevails to determine species by characteristic bone-marks can never be perfectly satisfactory, because there are many instances in which close structural resemblance is associated with great dissimilarity of habit. It is not so easy as some seem to think to distinguish between several of the long bones of the wolf with the corresponding bones of the collie, or between those of the sheep and of the goat. Then, as to footprints on stiff, tenacious quaternary clays, is there any risk of a label?—“marks of the feet of a small ruminant”—the marks being those of the feet of Sus scrofa (ferus) and not of gentle Ovis aries, L.