20 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
no recollection of seeing one, or hearing of one, killed in the low 
country—i. e., from the Spey to the Findhorn along the coast, 
a distance of eighteen or twenty miles, and extending inland 
eight or ten miles to where the hills and the grouse-grounds begin. 
High up between the sources of the Findhorn and the Spey 
(Invernesshire) one is occasionally obtained. ‘The only one of 
which the Rev. George Gordon, of Birnie, has any note in Moray, 
was killed at Cawdor, in Nairn, nearly fifty years ago. Edwards 
mentions one he saw which was killed in Glen Avon, but he gives 
no date: he considers it extinct now, though once abundant in the 
higher country. Besides the above information, I am informed of 
one which was killed at Dalry about nineteen years ago (say 1861). 
It used to be not uncommon long ago in Darnaway and Dalry 
Forests, near Forres, where, however, it is believed to be now 
extinct. 
Invernesshire.—From this county I have a large store of 
information, which, however, I do not consider it desirable to 
impart in all the minutie at present. It will be time enough for 
this when its extinction has actually taken place. It is becoming 
scarce all along Spey, even at Badenoch, and as far up the valley 
as Laggan, where the last—‘‘a very old one ”—was killed in 1878. 
It is not yet, however, extinct there. This one was killed at 
the back of the Manse at Laggan, on the glebe-lands, where there 
are large cairns frequented by rabbits.* In the Badenoch Forest 
and on the confines of North Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, and 
Banffshire, and in Rothiemurchus it is verging on extinction, if 
not already extinct. In Abernethy Forest it is extinct, and 
the last killed in Glenmore was in 1873. It is common still in 
Lochaber, Nether Lochaber, Arisaig and Moidart, Knoidart, and 
in all the suitable valleys of Northern Invernesshire north of the 
Caledonian Canal, where it is believed actually to be increasing 
in numbers in certain localities, owing to the protection afforded 
to it in the numerous deer-forests. The Rev. Alexander Stewart 
has recorded one seen, amongst others, by himself in the face 
of a cliff in a place called ‘‘ Dubh-ghlaic,’ or Black Gully, in 
Lochaber, three years ago (1877), and of another killed under 
peculiar circumstances, also in Lochaber, about 1868 (see Zool. 
* This one was preserved and stuffed for the Rev. Mr. M‘Fadyen, of 
Laggan, lately deceased. 
