Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/309



region which lies around the upper waters of the Solway Firth has experienced important changes since the days when Roman legions manned the forts that overlooked the channels of this great Firth against the attacks of northern warriors. Great forests of oak and other indigenous timber then extended from the base of the hills to the sea-beach. The foreign garrisons must have needed trustworthy guides when they sent out parties in search of forage, for so difficult was the country, and so dangerous were the watery depths of its reed-fringed morasses, that the utmost care must have been needed to avoid ambushed parties of the enemy. The forest glades in which the hind cropped the coppice-wood have long since been furrowed by the plough; the pedigree Shorthorn grazes on pastures over which herds of Aurochs once stampeded. Even the Bittern has no abiding-place among the bogs that still linger in the Abbey Holme. It is the preservation of such isolated tracts of broken moorland as we find in Salta Moss or Weddholm Flow that help us to picture this area as it existed in the days of our distant forefathers. The romance that once invested this wild country has well-nigh disappeared. Only here and there can we find the Merlin or the Short-eared Owl feeding their downy young among Zool. 4th ser. vol. V., August., 1901.