The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 145 
below) we may infer that it was also common and widely 
distributed in the district in the seventeenth century, though 
probably much less so than now; but I am inclined to think 
that between that time and the early part of the present 
century there was little if any increase in its numbers, except 
perhaps in a few localities. A combination of circumstances, 
however, among which the destruction of its natural enemies 
has probably not been the least important, has since favoured 
its increase, and now it can only be kept within bounds by 
systematic trapping and snaring. 
On 23rd May last I found a Rabbit’s nest at the foot of 
Auchinoon hill, in the parish of Midcalder, in an exceptional 
position. It was placed in the centre of a tuft of coarse grass, 
in what might have been a hare’s “form,” without the 
semblance of a burrow. In it were five young ones—blind 
and naked—enveloped in a mass of warm fur. 
From Boece’s “ Description of Scotland,” we learn that in 
the early part of the sixteenth century the islands of the 
Forth were “verie full of conies” (Hollinshead’s translation, 
1805 edition, p. 15); and in Stuart’s “ Priory of the Isle of 
May,” page xl, reference is made to a deed, by which in 1549 
the prior of Pittenweem conveyed the island to Patrick 
Learmonth of Dairsy, in which deed the island is described 
as now waste, and spoiled by rabbits from which the 
principal revenue used to accrue, but of which the warrens 
were now completely destroyed and the place ruined by 
the English. Bones of the Rabbit found in a “kitchen 
midden” on Inchkeith (Proceedings of the Society of Anti- 
guaries of Scotland, ix., 453), may point to it as an inhabitant 
of the islands of the Forth at a still earlier date, though 
they may merely have belonged to an animal that had made 
its burrow in the mound, and died there. In a charter 
granted on 10th November 1621 by James VI. in favour of 
the burgh of Peebles, we find “cunnings” and “cunningaries” 
specifically mentioned (Chambers’s “ Peeblesshire,” p. 544). 
Sibbald, in his “Scotia LIllustrata” (1684), says of the 
Cuniculus, “of these there is great plenty everywhere 
with us, especially on the coasts.”! In the “Old Statistical 
1 **Horum magna wbique apud nos copia, in Littore presertim.” 
VOL. XI. K 
