THE PHEASANT. 171 



shire for more than two hundred years afterwards ; and 

 there is apparently no record of its occurrence in the 

 county previous to 1810, in which year, according to an 

 old game -book kept at the Hirsel, one Pheasant was 

 killed there. The Hon. H. R Scott, who has kindly 

 furnished me with notes from the above game -book, adds 

 that "in 1816 there is an entry by Lord Home that in 

 shooting the covers on the Hirsel he saw only five or six 

 Pheasants, where, the previous year, he had seen thirty 

 brace." Writing in 1834, the Eev. George Cunningham, 

 minister of Dunse parish, says : " Pheasants were intro- 

 duced into the woods of Dunse Castle about twenty years 

 ago, and abound there, and in the neighbouring planta- 

 tions."^ Mr. Peter Scott, Lauder, whose father was for 

 many years gamekeeper at Thirlestane Castle, has informed 

 me that they were first turned out into the coverts there 

 in the time of James, the 8 th Earl of Lauderdale, who had 

 taken into his employment a gamekeeper named Robert 

 Fortune, from Salton Hall, or Whittingham, in East-Lothian. 

 Fortune visited Whittingham, or Lochend, where he pro- 

 cured a supply of the eggs of this species, from which young 

 birds were reared and set at liberty in the policy woods 

 of Thirlestane Castle. Mr. Scott likewise told me that 

 Pheasants were kept at Spottiswoode a year or two previous 

 to their introduction to Lauderdale, but were confined in 

 an enclosure. In 1821 they appear to have been still 

 found in rather small numbers at the Hirsel, for in Captain 

 Bell's diary I find an entry dated the 19 th of October 

 of that year : " Was at Hirsel shooting, and killed three 

 Pheasants and three hares." ^ The Eev. George Knight, 

 minister of Mordington parish, mentions in 1835 that 



1 N&w Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. ii. (Berwickshire), p. 251. 

 - Excerpt from diary kept by Captain Bell of the Berwickshire Militia, from 

 1802 to 1826. 



