MAMMALIA OF SOLWAY 203 



WATER SHREW, Crossopus fodiens. Of rather sporadic distribution, 

 depending as it seems to do in great measure on the presence 

 of water. It is, however, abundant wherever found. I have 

 known several colonies at places at least half a mile from any 

 water, and in summer it is not unusual to find it running 

 across the dry hill-paths in the evenings, at long distances from 

 even the smallest streams and ditches. The only variation in 

 colour that I have met, other than the well-known darker or 

 lighter shade of the under parts, was in an individual captured 

 a few weeks ago in which a deep black patch was enclosed 

 within the usual pale colour of the belly. 



WILD CAT, Felis catus. Although the late Captain Clark Kennedy 

 of Knockgray stated in a note to his poem " Robert the Bruce " 

 (1884), in reference to the rough country adjacent to Loch Dee, 

 that "a few Wild Cats [nearly extinct in Scotland] still hold 

 their own," I have not been able to ascertain any confirmation 

 of the gallant gentleman's assertion. Indeed the latest 

 authentic record of a Wild Cat in Galloway is one killed by a 

 Mr. Beck, then farmer in Balmangan, about 1820. At the 

 end of last century the cliffs along the Stewartry shore were 

 notorious for the Wild Cats that infested them. In Dumfries- 

 shire the race seems to have lingered till about the same 

 period, for one was killed at a locality on the heights betwixt 

 Middlebie and Tundergarth at Martinmas 1812. 



Fox, Cam's vulpes. Hunted by two packs of hounds in Dumfriesshire, 

 the Fox is plentiful there, although in the absence of the strict 

 protection that it obtains it is questionable if it would long 

 exist in the lower grounds. There has been no pack of hounds 

 kept in Galloway for something like forty years. The Foxes 

 there more than hold their own. Of late years quite a trade 

 in young Foxes has risen in the hill-country of Dumfriesshire 

 and the Stewartry, these youthful members of the mountain 

 race being sent off to fox-hunting districts at a price which is 

 seldom lower than half a sovereign each. In one comparatively 

 small glen in the Stewartry there were lately captured, kept for 

 a few weeks, and then forwarded to sportsmen, over sixty young 

 Foxes, and these were only a small proportion of those caught 

 in the district. 



MARTEN, Mustela martes. The only record I can find of the 

 presence of this animal in Solway is the statement by the Rev. 

 J. Little in the "Old Statistical Account" that in 1794 it existed 

 in Colvend. One captured near the head-waters of the Minnock 

 by some of the Marquis of Ailsa's keepers during the hard 

 winter of 1878-79 must have been a straggler from some part 

 of Ayrshire, for Martens had long been totally unknown in 

 Galloway. 



