Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/291

 12 s. vii. SEPT. is, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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farm produce sales, hawking tins of colouring matter. Purchasers of sheep upon buying their "lots " immediately mark their live property with initials, or some peculiar mark, on the fleece, and are thus able to identify their purchases. See English ' Dia- lect Dictionary,' under "reddle," for history of the term. W. JAGGARD, Capt.

Memorial Library, Stratford-on-Avon.

BLESSED WILLIAM OP ASSIST (12 S. ii. 50). - On early English Franciscans who bore the name of William, see Mr. A. G. Little's article, "Brother William of England, : ' in The English Historical Review for July, 1920, pp. 402-5. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

BROOCH AND MOTTO (12 S. vii. 2CS).~ Surely this is the regimental badge of the 90th Rifles, a regiment originating in Winr i- peg, Canada. The inscription refers, 1 believe, to the tradition that men of this regiment, on account of their valour and fighting skill, were named "little black devils " by the North American Indians on the field of battle. PERCY BRANSCOMBE.

181 Ferndale Road, S.W.9.

im

The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland : a Study in Faunal Evolution. By James Ritchie. (Cambridge University Press, 1 8s. net.)

THIS book should attract the attention alike of naturalists, teachers, and students of history. Although a popular work it has been put together so carefully and so abounds in instances and illustration that it successfully avoids most of the pitfalls which lie in the path of popularisation. Some account of the authorities upon which the writer draws for his history is much to'be desired. No doubt the lives of Boece, Major and Bishop Leslie may be turned up in books of reference ; this does not affect the contention that a good summary of their work as historians and its van e for the subject in hand, with some statement : s to the bulk and nature of other pertinent evidence, would have very considerably enhanced the usefulness of the book as a whole. Some excision of repetitions, which are numerous, would have procured the necessary space.

Scotland, as Dr. Ritchie justly says, is pecu- liarly well fitted for a study of this kind. From every point of view, whether size, conformation, climate, length of history, or number of species be considered, it has unusually well-marked limitations, within which the play of changing factors is relatively easy to trace.

In the account of Scottish cattle Dr. Ritchie makes a noteworthy suggestion founded on his observation of the bone deposits. The large majority of these remains are those of young animals, the bones not being completely ossified,

and milk-teeth being commonly found. This circumstance leads him to conclude that, during the time when these deposits were being formed,, which extends well into the beginning of the Christian period, the cattle were wild, or nearly so, and taken and slain by what was virtually hunting the young from their weakness op un wariness proving the readier victims.

The earliest description of the Shetland pony found by our author was written by Jerome Cardan, an Italian doctor who travelled in Scotland in 1552. It seems curious that the German horse brought over by the Roman legionaries is not to be thought of as exerting much influence on the imtive breed on the ground that " the Roman occupation was limited in space and in time ; " we should have thought both amply sufficient, other things being propi- tious. There is a reference to horse-breeding in the Charter of Kelso, by which (before 1200)* Gilbert de Imfraville granted the monks of Kelso a tenth of his foals ; and this Dr. Ritchie takes to be the earliest mention of Scottish horse- breeding.

He has found a curious provision illustrating the value of the house-dog in the twelfth century : if a man slew another man 's house-dog he him- self was to watch on that neighbour's midden for a year and a day and be responsible for any loss- during the time. Boece 's account of the dogs of Scotland comes in well winding up with the "sleuth" "it is statute, be the lawis of the Bordouris, he that denyis entres to the sleuthound, in time of chace and serching of guddis, sal be haldin participant with the crime and thift committit."

On pigs we noticed an interesting detail : a writer in the eighteenth century says that the men of Hoy preferred ropes made of the hair of the Orkney swine to any other for use in their perilous employment of collecting birds' eggs on the cliffs its elasticity rendering it less liable to be cut on sharp edges of rock.

The chapter on man's destruction of animal life in Scotland brings up a subject which we should have liked to see dealt with systematically by itself that is the effect on the fauna of Scotland^ of the Great War. It is well-known that this has been remarkable, even to the point of causing abrogation of sundry protective laws ; in fact Dr. Ritchie goes so far as to say that never in the memory of man have deer and rabbits, birds of prey, stoats, weasels and other "vermin," been so abundant as they are to-day. We are re- minded of an account we heard recently of the ' plague of adders now troubling Dorsetshire through the absence of gamekeepers from the woods.

It is satisfactory to learn how much protec- tion in some cases operating only just in time has done to preserve fine and rare species. The saving of the Grey Seal of the Hebrides is a good instance in point. It was ensured by an Act of Parliament of 1914, following, we believe, at least in part, on the interest in the matter- aroused by a vigorous and picturesque article in The Cornhill of July, 1913, from the pen of Mr. Hesketh Prichard. Was Scotland ever the home of the bear ? Dr. Ritchie shows good reason for thinking so, though the actual evidence is not abundant. The wolf, as every one knows, was, till only about two hundred years ago, a- hated denizen of the wilds. Did not the people