36 CARNIVORA 



banks still called the cat-holes, which were the headquarters 

 of the wild cats that prevailed there. . . . It is only 

 within a recent period that the last of them was killed." In 

 his 1874 article Dr Hardy adduces further evidence of the 

 animal being formerly familiar to the country people in the 

 Border districts. Alexander Somerville's encounter with it 

 in the Ogle Burn, a deep dark wooded ravine running into 

 the Lammermoors in the parish of Innerwick, as related in 

 his " Autobiography of a Working Man," is quoted at length. 

 Other localities particularised are " The Sting," on Upper 

 Monynut, also in the Lammermoors, where the last " decking" 

 is said to have been destroyed about sixty years since; Belton 

 Wood, where one is supposed to have been seen somewhat 

 later; and the Press Woods, on the edge of Coldingham 

 Moor. Place-names such as Cat-craig, now quarried away 

 for lime, on the coast east from Dunbar ; Wulcat Yett, a few 

 miles from Jedburgh ; Cat-lee Burn, in Southdean, are put 

 forward as additional evidence ; and in this connection I may 

 also mention Wul-cat-brae on the Eye (op. cit., ix., p. 15), and 

 Cat-slack in Yarrow. In the "Old Statistical Account" 

 (xvi., p. 76) the Wild Cat is included among the quadrupeds 

 then inhabiting the parish of Castletown in Roxburghshire, a 

 record which is not referred to either by Dr Hardy or Mr 

 Harvie-Brown. In the tenth volume of the " Proceedings " 

 of the Berwickshire Club (p. 47) it is recorded that at the 

 Jedburgh meeting in September 1883, " a Wild Cat (F. catus) 

 shot a few years ago at Wolflee," was exhibited by Mr J. T. 

 S. Elliot ; but I would ask, Is there no likelihood of this 

 having been a domestic cat run wild ? 



The " Old Statistical Account " contains abundant evidence 

 of the Wild Cat in Stirlingshire in the end of last century. In 

 the " New Statistical Account " of the county it is spoken of 

 as extinct in 1842 in Campsieand Fintry, but as still existing 



