i;8 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



In inland localities, which it has now altogether forsaken, 

 the Chough nested down to the eighteenth and even to the 

 nineteenth century. The following facts are summarized 

 from Mr J. H. Buchanan's account of the Chough in Scot- 

 land. In the midlands it occurred in Glenlyon in "Perthshire 

 in 1769, in 1795 there was a pair or two on the Campsie 

 Fells and records exist of its presence on the Ochil Hills 

 and on the Clova Hills of Forfarshire. In the Lowlands 

 it frequented the Corra Linn Fall on the Clyde about 1770, 

 and the last individual from an inland breeding-place was 

 shot at Crawfordjohn in Lanarkshire in 1834. 



On the cliffs of the coast as a rule it held its own to a 

 later date, but from most of these also it has disappeared. 

 On the east coast it has been found at Dunrobin in Sutherland- 

 shire and at St Abbs in Berwickshire, but even in 1851 all 

 but a single pair had forsaken the fastnesses of the latter 

 neighbourhood. On the west coast its former haunts are 

 better known, for in the secluded places of that wild shore it 

 is making its last stand in Scotland. It has gone from the 

 parishes of Kilbrandon and Kilchattan, and of Giga and 

 Cara in Argyllshire, where the writers of the Old Statistical 

 Account knew it. On the island of Lismdre on Loch 

 Linnhe, where flocks existed at the opening of the nine- 

 teenth century, it is extinct. The majority of the islands 

 have been deserted: Skye, Raasay, the Long Island, where 

 it still existed about 1830, Tyree, Rum, Mull, Colonsay, 

 lona and Arran (where the last pair was shot in 1863), on 

 all of which it once had harbourage, know it in its numbers 

 no more. On a few islands of the Inner Hebrides, especially 

 on I slay, and on the coast near the boundary of Ayrshire 

 and Wigtownshire, it retains its last feeble hold in Scotland, 

 but without generous protection its race in the northern 

 kingdom is doomed, a result in great part due to the exertions 

 of the game-preserver, and a penalty ill-becoming one of the 

 most interesting of " vermin." 



Other creatures are slaughtered in immense numbers 

 on account of their harmfulness, though the fact that many 

 remain pests,- indicates that their numbers are not seriously 

 on the wane. Most of the following belong to this category. 



