356 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



to be now and then sent to us by way of present... the known commoditie 

 yee have to provide, capercaillies and termigantis....The raritie of these 

 foules will both make their estimation the more pretious, and confirm the 

 good opinion conceaved of the good cheare to be had there. 



In Perthshire the bird is always referred to as rare. It is 

 no wonder, therefore, that when the " Laird of Glenorquhy " 

 sent a Capercaillie to Prince Charles of Wales at Perth in 

 February 1651, the King "accepted it weel as a raretie, for 

 he had never seen any of them before." It is strange that 

 while it was so scarce in the wild midlands the Capercaillie 

 should have been common in the eastern counties, yet Robert 

 Edward, the minister of Murroes, Montrose, in an account 

 of Angus published in 1678, writes to the effect that "The 

 mountains and heaths abound with partridge, Capercaillies, 

 and plover, etc. etc." It is less strange that in the wilds of 

 Aberdeenshire, Taylor, the Water Poet, should have found 

 "Caperkellies" included in the "great variety of cheere" 

 furnished him by the "goode Lord Erskine" during his 

 visit to the " Brea of Marr" in 1618; or that in the dense 

 forests of Sutherland, Sir Robert Gordon should have to 

 record in 1630 that "there is great store of partridges, 

 pluivers, capercalegs " and many others. 



Notwithstanding a local plenty, we cannot help feeling 

 that, even in the early years of the seventeenth century, the 

 Capercaillie was already suffering from the disappearance ot 

 the forests, for in 1621, the Scottish Parliament prohibited 

 the buying and selling of, amongst others, "Caperkayllies" 

 under penalty of "ane hundreth pounds money." 



But the law did little to save the Capercaillie from 

 extinction, for the records of the eighteenth century clearly 

 show a diminishing range with a steady drift northwards. 

 There is now no mention of the bird in the eastern counties 

 or even in Perthshire. It inhabited Speyside in 1745 ; but in 

 1754, Burt says it "is very seldom to be met with" in the 

 north of Scotland, and in 1775, when Shaw described it as 

 "become rare" in Moray, probably it was already extinct. 

 At any rate, the last example said to have been seen in 

 Scotland was in the woods of Strathglass in Inverness-shire 

 in 1762, although Pennant states in an indefinite way that it 

 was "still to be met with" in "Glen-Moriston, and east of 

 that Straith Glas" at the time of his tour of Scotland in 



