RECORBS IN SCOTLAND. 23 



and find secure shelter and protection in the numerous 

 caverns and holes in the limestone districts. 



Macgillivray (Nat. Libr. vol. ii. 1838) says that the 

 Wild Cat appears to be more abundant in the woods 

 of the counties o£ Perth, Aberdeen, and Argyle than 

 in any other part of Scotland, and specimens from 

 these districts are not unfrequently sent to Edinburgh 

 to be preserved. 



The same author, writing in 1855, reports that the 

 Wild Cat had become extremely rare. 



Egbert Gray, in a list of the Quadrupeds of 

 Loch Lomond and its vicinity, in 1877, states that 

 this undoubted species has been repeatedly trapped 

 in the immediate vicinity of the Loch. 



The late E. E. Alstox (' The Fauna of Scotland,' 

 1880) says that this animal, once generally distri- 

 buted over the mainland, is now totally extirpated in 

 the lowlands and in many parts of the highlands. It 

 is still to be found, however, in the wilder districts 

 of most of the northern counties, especially in the 

 Deer forests, where it is left comparatively undis- 

 turbed. Till of late years its southern outpost was 

 the mountainous country about Loch Lomond ; but it 

 is now extinct in that neighbourhood, and Alston 

 believed that none exist south of the northern district 

 of Argyle and Perthshire. There appears to be no 

 evidence that the Wild Cat was ever found in any of 

 the Islands. 



J. A. Harvie-BrowjV, in "The Past and Present 

 Distribution of the Earer Animals of Scotland " (Zool. 

 1881), gives a list of the different counties in which the 

 Wild Cat has- been killed or last seen in the present 

 century. He states that in Dumfries, Kirkcudbright- 

 shire, and Wigtonshire not one has been seen for 



