1 3 6 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



carried on in former days. In the parishes of Braemar, 

 Crathie, Glenmuick, Tulloch and Glengarden, near the head 

 of the Dee in Aberdeenshire, the ten years 1776 to 1786 

 saw the death of " 2520 Hawks and Kites"; the estates of 

 Langwell and Sandside in Sutherlandshire in the seven years 

 1819 to 1826 yielded 1115 Hawks; and the Sutherland 

 estates in the same county in the three years 1831 to 1834, 

 1055 Hawks. To what extent such persecution has ulti- 

 mately affected their numbers, it is not easy to say, though 

 no better proof of their reduction below Nature's standard 

 is needed than the fact that since the Great War has called 

 gamekeepers from forest and moor to the field of battle, many 

 districts have seen such a revival of Sparrow- Hawks, Kestrels 

 and Merlins as has not been known in living memory. 



"RAVENOIS FOULLIS" 



fhese birds also, the RAVEN (Corvus cor ax] and its 

 relatives, did much damage in their day to young lambs 

 and the feathered inhabitants of the farmyard. They too 

 have been subjected to long and steady persecution. One 

 has only to compare their numbers and habits in former days 

 and to-day to realize how much the "ravenois foullis" have 

 suffered at the hand of man. 



In the sixteenth century Ravens and others of the race 

 of crows were common in the streets of the large towns, 

 where, as I shall show hereafter, they were encouraged and 

 actively protected for the value of their work as scavengers 

 (p. 224). Even in the streets of Edinburgh and Leith they 

 went about their disagreeable task unmolested, witness 

 Wedderburn's account of the events which followed upon 

 the ellipse of the sun in 1 597 : 



The peiple with gryt fair fled aff the calsayis [causeways] to houssis 

 mourning and lamenting, and the crawis and corbeis and ravenois foullis 

 fled to houssis to our steple and tolbuith and schip tappis, maist merveul- 

 ously affrayit. 



Now, Carrion Crows and Ravens, once so common, are 

 birds rarely to be seen; from the streets they have been 

 driven to the wilds and to rocky fastnesses in the Low- 

 lands^the Highlands and the Islands of Scotland. "Vermin 

 Lists " again reveal the secret of the disappearance. In the 



