66 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 
in the English Lake District six dead Martens were found 
in traps set in a circle round a tree for a fox. The Polecat 
has suffered in like manner. 
These are not isolated cases; they are unfortunately 
symptomatic of what is happening in almost all the few 
places still inhabited by these rare creatures. The story 
need not be elaborated. We are aware that Wild Cats, 
Pine Martens, and Polecats are not guiltless in the matter 
of destruction of game, but is their guilt so great that they 
must be ruthlessly exterminated, to the irretrievable loss of 
the Scottish fauna ? 
We would appeal to proprietors and shooting tenants 
to consider the matter in a broad light; to Zoological 
Societies to abstain from encouraging the capture of these 
creatures ; and most strongly we would insist on the need 
for the immediate creation of a reserve in the northern 
Highlands, where a remnant of the dwindling stock might 
find a safe refuge for all time to come. 
- Since our last issue Scottish natural history is the poorer 
by the loss of two men of very different type and training, 
but at one in their enthusiasm for the study of animal life. 
Robert Dunlop, who died on 21st April, was a child of poor 
parents, and learned reading and writing during his 
apprenticeship; by trade he was an iron-moulder, by 
nature a naturalist. Nature won the day, and Dunlop not 
only became Curator of the Pittencrieff Glen Museum in 
Dunfermline, but himself collected in this country and in 
Australasia, the 30,000 specimens, zoological, geological, and 
anthropological, housed there. His researches in Scotland 
were mainly paleontological, but he also contributed several 
notes on the Scottish fauna, the last of which appeared in 
these pages in 1920. 
k * * * * 
Colonel R. G. Wardlaw Ramsay of Whitehill and 
Tillicoultry, died 22nd April, was a representative of an 
old family, by profession a soldier, whose later years were 
devoted to public affairs. Then, and during his periods 
