NOVEMBER 249 



some of the bleakest, most treeless tracks in northern 

 Britain. Of the true forest nothing remains but a few 

 — very few — shreds and patches; the finest of which, 

 that dark mantle of noble pines along the south shore 

 of Loch Arkaig, has been consigned to the timber 

 merchant within the last few years.^ 



It would be folly now to search the deer ground of 

 Sutherland and Caithness for a head approaching in 

 grandeur to one preserved in the Museum at Dunrobin. 

 This was found in the Halladale River in 1869. 'The 

 circumference of the beam above the bay point is 

 extraordinary, no less than nine inches, greater, in fact, 

 than any modern wapiti. The horns are not long 

 (thirty-six inches), but very massive, and carry twenty- 

 six points.' ^ 



Not far from my own home in Galloway the river 

 Cree winds for about eight miles in a tidal estuary 

 before it reaches Wigtown Bay. The deep alluvium 

 through which it has cut a devious course contains 

 the ruins of the primeval forest — ^huge stems of oak, 

 which, unlike the usual black timber from the bogs, 



' In 1788 Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon, sold a great breadth of 

 the pine forest of Glenmore to an English merchant, who took 

 eighteen years to fell it. The logs were floated down the Spey, and 

 built at Speymouth into forty-seven ships of an aggregate burthen of 

 19,000 tons. When Mr. Osborne, the purchaser of the timber, 

 finished his work in 1806, he sent a memorial plank to the Duke, 

 which now stands in the entrance hall at Gordon Oastle. It measures 

 5 feet 5 inches wide at the butt end, and 4 feet 4 inches at the top, 

 and is of a rich dark brown colour. In 1912 the top of this magni- 

 ficent tree was still lying where it was cut off more than a hundred 

 years ago, on the hill above Glenmore Lodge, 1400 feet above the sea, 

 and was still hard and sound. It measured three feet in diameter — 

 nine foet in circumference — where it was cut off. 



^ Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. iii. p. 95. 



