The History of the European Fauna

by R. F. Scharff

The Siberian immigrants into Europe on the whole are not very numerous, but it is different with those from the more southern parts of the Asiatic continent. The members of the Oriental migration form a very large percentage of the European fauna. No other migration has affected our continent so powerfully, because it continued uninterruptedly for a very long time. Hence its results can be traced from one corner of Europe to the other. We have seen that the Siberian migration only commenced after the first portion of the Glacial period had passed away. The Oriental, however, persisted throughout, or at any rate for the greater part of that period. It commenced ages before it, in miocene times, or even earlier. And as the Ægean Sea, which broke up the highway of the Oriental migrants, is only of recent formation, there was a steady westward march for a very considerable time. No doubt the migration was also favoured by the fact that scarcely any formidable barriers had to be crossed.

Many instances might be quoted of the same species forming part of the Oriental and also of the Siberian migration, but as a rule the Siberian migrant belongs to a distinct variety, or has such well-marked racial characters as to be at once detected from its more southern relative. Among the examples of Oriental migrants which I have occasion to bring forward, such instances will be specially dealt with.

In its wild state the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) is almost extinct in the British Islands, though it still occurs in the moorlands of Devonshire and Somersetshire in England, in the south-west of Ireland, and in some localities in Scotland. Fifty years ago it was also found wild in several other of the Irish western counties; and in the seventeenth century it was common in most of the mountainous districts of Ireland. Its remains have been found fossil in the marls and caves of Ireland, and in the Forest-Bed, as well as in a large number of caves in England. The history of the Red Deer in other countries is very similar. In Scandinavia it flourished as far north as the sixty-eighth degree of latitude, whereas it is now quite extinct on the mainland, though still lingering on in some of the western islands. Denmark and Switzerland know it no more, and it is almost extinct in Belgium. Nearly throughout Europe where it occurs, its numbers are diminishing, greatly owing, perhaps, to the relentless persecution by man, but its gradual disappearance must likewise be partly due to other causes. Formerly it inhabited every country of Europe and all the larger islands. It still exists in Corsica and Sardinia, and at an earlier period it was also met with on the island of Malta. The Red Deer found in Corsica and Sardinia is smaller than that inhabiting Central Europe, and is by some authorities regarded as a distinct species, which has been named Cervus corsicanus. But Sir Victor Brooke has pointed out that the antlers of some of the Scotch Deer agree in every point with those of the Sardinian species. Indeed, the West European Red Deer altogether is a small-antlered form, compared with the Eastern one. This character, however, is only a racial one, and not of specific value. In the pleistocene deposits of Eastern and Central Europe, a very large-antlered race has been discovered, and identified by Professor Nehring with Cervus canadensis—the Canadian Red Deer. Tcherski, the Siberian traveller, believed that Cervus canadensis was identical with, or a variety of, the Asiatic species of Deer, Cervus eustephanus, Cervus xanthopygus, and Cervus maral. Some authorities—and to these belong Mr. Lydekker—think that we ought perhaps to regard the whole number of Red Deer-like forms as local varieties of one widely-spread species. Besides the deer already referred to, the following belong to this same group:—Cervus cashmirianus, Cervus affinis, Cervus Roosvelti, from North America, and the North African Cervus barbarus.

The question now is, where have these varieties originated? Or, if we go to the root of the matter, where is the original home of their ancestors? Considering that so many Cervidæ have been found in French and English pliocene deposits, and that remains of the Red Deer occur not only in the English Forest-Bed, but have been found associated with those of the Pigmy Hippopotamus in Malta, it would only be reasonable to suppose that the genus Cervus had originated in Europe. It might also be argued with equal force that the Red Deer had its birthplace in our continent. But when we carefully study its present range this verdict cannot be accepted. The view of the Asiatic origin of the Red Deer, so ably maintained by Köppen, corresponds far better with its present distribution, especially if we look upon the Asiatic, North American, and North African forms as varieties of the same species.

If the Red Deer were of European origin, it must have come into existence at a time when Malta was part of the mainland, when North Africa and the British Islands were connected with the continent of Europe, and of course before the deposition of the Forest-Bed. Such land-connections existed probably during the Pliocene Epoch. Migrants would have wandered from Europe into Asia. These would have developed into larger races, which again furnished emigrants for North America. The latter crossed by the old land-connection which once joined America and Asia at Behring's Straits. During pleistocene times the large Siberian race would now have re-migrated to the home of its ancestors in Europe, for we find the remains only in Central and Eastern Europe, indicating that an invasion of the Red Deer from Asia must then have taken place.

Against this view of the European origin of the Red Deer, it may be urged that deer are known from Indian as well as from European pliocene deposits, and that a migration could have taken place from the Oriental Region to Europe just as easily as from the latter to Asia. The majority of the species of the genus Cervus (in a wide sense), moreover, are Asiatic, ranging to Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippine Islands, all of which islands have been separated from the mainland for a considerable time. Finally, the original home of a species, as we have learned, generally corresponds with the centre of its geographical range, and this lies in the case of the Red Deer in Central Asia.

One of the highest authorities on the deer family, Sir Victor Brooke, also was of opinion that the Cervidæ originated in Asia, and from there spread east and west. Of the two divisions into which true deer are divided, viz., the Plesiometacarpalia and the Telemetacarpalia, the former is almost confined to the Old and the latter to the New World. The only North American species belonging to the first division is the Canadian Red Deer, which fact clearly indicates its recent immigration to that continent.

There were probably two distinct migrations of the Red Deer into Europe. An older one coming from Asia Minor into Greece, which stocked Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, and North Africa in the first place, when these were still connected with one another. This same migration likewise affected western continental Europe, the Irish Red Deer being probably the descendant of this very ancient stock. The latter entered the island when it was still part of the Continent. The later migration of a larger form came from Siberia and spread mainly over Eastern and Central Europe, but it appears that it also reached England, although there is no evidence of any of these Siberian deer having ever inhabited Ireland.

The range of this deer, therefore, to some extent corresponds to that of another described on p. [153]. We found then that two races of Reindeer had migrated to the British Islands—one from the Arctic Regions, and the other from Siberia, but that only the former had reached Ireland.