To Mountain Tarn 



be found. Probably, too, domestic cats would 

 have to be weak ; and they are strong. 



Manifestly these cats are rarities, otherwise 

 why make so much of them ? If there are many 

 more, methinks " the lady doth protest too much." 

 Whence arose the two in the empty woodland, 

 where only the ghosts of their forefathers walk ? 

 When a wild animal in the centre of its ancestral 

 domain is kept captive, the case is hopeless. If 

 these are genuine wild cats where is so much 

 obscurity, the only two known in the land why 

 not turn them out ? Is there no bid for them ? 

 Can no landlord be found who will give them 

 the run of his place ? If not, why talk of the 

 wild cats of Scotland on the strength of two 

 barred in a cage ? 



If such considerations do not appeal to those 

 who are already convinced, I can only quote a 

 testimony which, in the view of the man in the 

 street, will outweigh that of an expert. I am 

 asked to account for six skins, two skulls, and two 

 live animals, together with the assertion of many 

 more where these came from. Writing, some 

 fifty years ago, when the strain was still strong 

 in the land, John Colquhoun says : 



" I have spent a great part of my life in the 

 most mountainous districts of Scotland, where 

 killing vermin formed the gamekeeper's principal 

 business, and often my own recreation. I have 

 never seen more than five or six genuine wild 

 E 49 



