DESTRUCTION FOR SAFETY OF MAN AND STOCK 125 



leaving only such place names as Wild Cat Wood and Wild 

 Cat Craigs to commemorate its presence, while in the border 

 counties the last Wild Cat was slain in Berwickshire near 

 Old Cambus in 1849. Here too its former presence is per- 

 petuated in such place names as Wulcatt Yett, Cat-leeburn, 

 and Cat-cleugh in Roxburghshire ; indeed there is scarcely a 

 county but has such traditional record of its presence, though 

 this evidence must be accepted with caution on account of the 

 possibility of confusion with the Marten " Cat." 



Fig. 30. Wild Cat (from a West Inverness-shire example). ^ nat. size. 



About the time that it was being exterminated in the 

 Lowlands, the Wild Cat was also hard pressed in the counties 

 bordering the midland valley, and in the more open counties 

 along the east coast. In 1842 it was already extinct in most 

 of the parishes of Stirlingshire, though it still survived in 

 Strathblane. A solitary pair, killed in Glendye in 1850, was 

 the last of the Kincardine breed. In Aberdeenshire, 44 were 

 killed in the ten years succeeding 1 776 in five parishes about 

 Braemar, yet in the Don Valley the last was killed near Alford 

 Bridge only in 1862, though in the wilder Glen Tanar it 

 survived till 1875. In the woodlands along the southern 

 shores of the Moray Firth its general disappearance may be 

 placed about 1830, when an individual was killed at Cawdor 



