It surprises many
people to learn that in Britain we have seventy-five species and
sub- species of native mammals, a number almost as great as a
thousand years ago, for within historical time we have lost only
the wolf, the beaver, the wild boar, the brown bear and the
reindeer, one fifteenth of the total. Numbers of many species are
now much restricted, so is their distribution, and it is possible
that some kinds are more wary than in the past, though where
sanctuary is given animals soon become easier of approach. Surprise
at the number of species comes from the fact that we see so little
of most of our mammals as compared with our much richer bird life.
Quite half our mammals live a more or less underground existence
during the hours of daylight.
Over twenty mammals
live in the sea and are not visible except when they come up to
breathe–-the whales, dolphins and porpoises–though one
who lives by the sea may gain stimulating sidelights on the habits
of these creatures.
There are twelve
species of bats, all night-flying. In daytime and in
winter the bats roost in belfries and caves and places where the
average person does not go, so we know little of this sixth part of
our mammalian fauna.
There are many more
amateur watchers of birds than of mammals, not only for the reasons
just given, but because there are over four hundred species of
birds on the British List. Birds are mobile creatures, many being
migratory, and lots more visit this country only
occasionally
Butterflies, moths
and dragon-flies are the most spectacular of the thousands of kinds
of insects which populate the earth with us, and because of their
visual prominence and beauty they do receive some kindly regard
from the citizen. There are only seventy-five British butterflies,
several hundreds of moths and a mere handful of
dragon-flies.
There are about five
thousand beetles in Britain, some useful to husbandry, some
harmful, but most of them neutral and living their lives
unseen. Two-winged flies are more numerous and obvious than
the beetles and there are nearly as many species. These are the
basic food supply of much of our other wild life.
Britain has few
reptiles. There is one poisonous snake, the adder, and two harmless
ones, the grass snake and the ringed snake. The slow-worm is a
legless lizard sometimes mistaken for a snake.
Our amphibians are
also few–the frog, two toads and three newts.
All these things are
much affected by the results of human activities such as
agriculture, fen drainage, and industrial expansion with its
consequent pollution of air and water.
Over two thousand
species make up the British flora and these again are much at the
mercy of man, who does not so much directly destroy as render a
habitat untenable for some plants by his varied activities. Many of
our rarest and most beautiful plants have little or no place as
animal food, but vegetation is at the base of the whole pyramid of
wild life. And not only as food : plants show immense variety in
type and habitat and provide a large measure of the topography of a
countryside. Cover means much in animal life– for the
predator catching its quarry, for the quarry hiding from the
predator. It is also a factor ameliorating climate. So
man in his control of vegetation wields a fateful sword in the
lives of the rest of the animal world.
