WILD CAT. 91 



and most destructive beast we have. He speaks of it as being 

 three or four times as large as a common Cat. We saw one 

 dead, which had been hunted on the day we saw it ; and it 

 seemed very little inferior, if at all, to the size he mentions." 

 By 1795 Wild Cats seera to have become very scarce in the 

 mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland; and the last 

 authentic occurrence of one of these animals in the district 

 appears to have been in 1843, when a fine specimen is stated 

 to have been killed near Loweswater. It is true that the 

 occurrence of the Wild Cat has been recorded in these 

 districts in quite recent years —even as late as 1871 — but all 

 such records appear to have been based on large feral speci- 

 mens of the Domestic Cat. 



In Scotland, though still lingering, the Wild Cat is rapidly 

 decreasing in numbers. According to Messrs. Harvie-Brown 

 and Buckley, while it has become extremely rare in Assynt 

 during the last few years, it is still not uncommon in the Reay 

 Forest, where it is preserved by the Duke of Westminster. 

 These authors write that " one keeper in Assynt killed no less 

 than twenty-six Wild Cats between 1869 and 1880, but of 

 these only three during the last six years. Another keeper 

 killed ten between 1870 and 1873, but no more until the 

 winter of 1879-80, when he killed four, one of which is 

 described as a monster." In Caithness the Wild Cat is still 

 more rare, only four having been recorded as being killed 

 during some ten years before 1880. Writing in 1882 of its 

 present limits in Scotland, the former of the two authors just 

 quoted said that the Wild Cat is "extinct all south and 

 east of a line commencing, roughly speaking, at Oban, in 

 Argyllshire, passing up the Brander Pass to Dalmally, follow- 

 ing the boundary of Perthshire, and including Rannoch Moor. 

 Thence continued north-eastward to the junction of the three 

 counties of Perth, Forfar, and Aberdeen ; thence across the 



