THE RARER ANIMALS OF SCOTLAND. 3 



distribution, though the said notes do not profess to exhaust the 

 subject. Commencing in the North of Scotland, and travelling 

 southwards, the comparison between the notes under each county 

 will, I believe, be made easiest : — 



Caithness.— From this county I have no returns, as I have 

 hitherto failed to obtain a regular correspondent in it. 



Sutherland.— This county appears eminently suited to the 

 habits and requirements of the species, especially in the more 

 mountainous districts of the north and west, and of the east. 

 They are preserved in the Duke of Sutherland's own Forest of 

 Dunrobin, and they breed there every year. A male, caught in a 

 trap in Balblair Wood in October, 1866, was at once liberated, 

 but a sow, caught in a trap in 1870, was not so fortunate, but 

 died before it could be released. Elsewhere, in the east of the 

 county, they cannot be said to be plentiful. Mr. T. E. Buckley, 

 indeed, who lived there for many years, and is intimately 

 acquainted with the district, writes me that he never heard of the 

 Badger in the district until 1879, when one was killed at Dun- 

 robin : "but," he adds, "they used to be present on this ground, 

 as there is a barn on Gordon Bush called A It-nam-broe. In the 

 Beay country it still exists in small numbers. Two were trapped 

 about 1875 or 1876 on the march of the Beay forest, in a fox-trap 

 baited with a hare.* 



Eosshire. — In many parts of this county, where it was, not 

 many years ago, abundant, it is now nearly or quite extinct. In 

 the parish of Gairloch it is considered quite extinct by Mr. 

 Osgood H. Mackenzie, who is intimately acquainted with the 

 fauna of his district. He records the last killed twenty years ago 

 (say 1860) at Inverewe. In May, 1879, distinct evidence of the 

 presence of a Badger was seen by the forester in Fannich Forest, 

 it having passed the winter in a den there. In the preceding 

 spring a Badger was trapped in the neighbouring Forest of 



* I may mention here that I have a great many returns of vermin killed 

 in this county for many years back, from which I could cull many facts of 

 the past and present distribution of this species ; but I prefer to retain these 

 notes for the present, or at least only occasionally to refer to them, as I think 

 that the material will accumulate sufficiently to make a fuller paper upon 

 " Past and Present Distribution of so-called Vermin," and will be more 

 interesting in this form. 



