DECEMBER 233 



have disappeared within living memory, have not been 

 successful so far, but there need be little doubt that 

 perseverance would prevail with them, as it did in the 

 case of capercailzie. A shepherd, who died two or 

 three years ago, told me that he had last seen ptarmigan 

 on the Merrick, a hill in Galloway of 2700 feet, in 1826. 

 That year is still referred to in this district as ' the year 

 of the short corn,' and my informant attributed the 

 extinction of ptarmigan to the great drought that pre- 

 vailed that summer. That may have proved the last 

 straw, but no doubt the birds succumbed here, as on the 

 Cumberland hills, to the improved style of fowling- 

 piece. In the Highlands, ptarmigan are as numerous 

 as ever, if not more so, because, as their chosen haunts 

 are generally in a deer-forest, they are seldom molested 

 by sportsmen. That the southern uplands are quite 

 suitable for maintaining this lovely game-bird, let a 

 manuscript of the seventeenth century, preserved in 

 the Edinburgh Advocates' Library, testify : 



' In the remote parts of this great mountain (the Merrick) 

 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 Eed-cock, and the flesh 

 much of the same nature ; feeds, as that bird doth, on the 

 seeds of the bull-rush, 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.' 



The lonely top of Merrick presents the same aspect 

 to-day as when these lines were penned, but red deer, 



