THE GOLDEN EAGLE IN GALLOWAV 47 



THE GOLDEN EAGLE IN GALLOWAY. 



By Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart. 



The following note about the Merrick, 2750 feet, the highest 

 hill in the Scottish Lowlands, occurs in the topographical 

 MSS. of Walter Macfarlane (died 1767), preserved in the 

 Advocates' Library : 



" In the remote parts of this great mountain are very large 

 Red deer, and about the top thereof that fine bird called the 

 Mountain Partridge, or, by the commonalty, the Tarmachan, about 

 the size of a Red cock [grouse], and in flesh much of the same 

 nature; feeds, as that bird doth, on the seeds of the bullrush 

 [an error], and makes its protection in the chinks and hollow 

 places of thick stones from the insults of the eagles, which are 

 in plenty, both the large gray and the black, about that mountain." 



A month or two ago I must have written of all these 

 animals as being extinct in this fine wild district. The last 

 Red Stag in the Forest of Buchan was shot, it is said, 

 by the minister of Kirkinner about the year 1747, fifty 

 years or so before MacOueen of Pall-a-chrocain killed the 

 last Wolf on the Monadhlialh among the headwaters of 

 the Findhorn.^ A shepherd in Glen Trool told me long 

 ago that the Ptarmigan disappeared from the Southern 

 Uplands in "the year o' the short corn" 1827 (or was 

 it 1828?), and the efforts of the Duke of Bedford to 

 re-establish this species have not proved successful so far. 



The Golden Eagle last reared its brood in this district 

 in 1835, and the Erne or White-tailed Eagle in 1866. 

 In 1905 a pair of Golden Eagles returned to Cairnsmore 

 and built an eyrie, but failed to hatch the solitary egg 

 that was laid therein. One at least of this pair was shot 

 near Kirkcudbright in the following winter. I have not 

 since heard of a Golden Eagle being seen hereabouts 



' Lays of the Deer Forest, hy John .Sobieski and Charles Edward 

 Stuart, vol. ii., pp. 244-247. 



