RECORDS OF THE BURGH OF LOCHMABEN. 123 
minute book of the Town Council of date 1718, the halberd of the 
burgh officer, supposed to be an old battle axe; four hundred 
silver coins found last year during the excavations in connection 
with the sewage operations, jougs used on those sentenced to 
“durance vile’’ in the old days, and articles made from black 
oak found in the Castle Loch. Some conversation took place 
with regard to the finding of the black oak. The Chairman 
stated that he believed there was a crannog, but the matter had 
never been really gone into, though it was deserving of being 
investigated. Bailie Lennox said he had taken soundings of the 
loch, and had drawn stabs out of the part where there was 
believed to have been a straight way at one time. Some of the 
wood was only two feet below the surface of the water, at a point 
half-way between the landing stage and the castle on the shore 
side. Mr Service said there was no doubt that there was a path- 
way such as had been referred to, and he believed that it was of 
the same character as the other crannogs in the district. 
THe VENDACE. By RosBertT Service, M.B.O.U. 
The only member of our Vertebrate Fauna that we can claim 
as our very own is the interesting fish that is the subject of this 
short communication. The Natter Jack Toad is not quite so 
familiar as one of our local institutions though we have it here 
fairly commonly, but then we have to share it with some other, 
few and far between, localities in Great Britain. For nearly a 
whole century we had one absolutely unique local species that 
had never been found anywhere else. This was the Coluber 
Dumfriesiensis, or “The Dumfries Snake,’’ of which a specimen 
was said to have been taken somewhere in our neighbourhood by 
a Mr T. W. Simmons, and described by Sowerby as a new species. 
So it remained, no other specimens turned up, and the identity of 
the “Dumfries Snake ’’ was becoming more than questionable, 
when Mr Boulenger, of the British Museum of Natural History, 
discovered that after all there had been some curious blunder, or 
transposition of specimens, and that the “ Dumfries Snake ”’ was 
a Central American species. 
This, however, is a digression. We have no Vertebrate that 
is absolutely confined to our own faunal area. The Vendace 
comes marvellously near to the desired “ parochialism,’’ how- 
