Quadrupeds. 425 



the body, just in the manner in which they would have been manipu- 

 lated for the purpose of being stuffed and preserved, but with far 

 greater exactness and neatness. There was no vestige of the ribs and 

 back-bone, but the skull and bones of the limbs remained partially 

 attached to the skin ; but all were cleaned and cleared of every par- 

 ticle of soft or fleshy matter. 



Water-rat, Arvicola amphibia, and var. /3. ater. 



Field campagnol, A. agrestis. 



Red or meadow vole, A. riparia. This species abounds in the 

 neighbourhood of Cawdor, where it has been known for several years 

 to be most destructive to the newly-planted larches. No sooner are 

 the plants put out into the ground, than a single night is sufficient to 

 show the ravages, and a few days will scarcely leave a plant over 

 whole acres, but what is more or less injured. The chief object of 

 attack at this season (December) seems to be the newly-formed bud, 

 which they eat out with the greatest nicety, often leaving the outer 

 scales attached like a lid, after the kernel, as it were, is gone. When 

 the branchlets are too slender to bear the animal to the buds at their 

 extremity, they are gnawed across, and falling to the ground yield up 

 their treasures an easy prey to the little robber. Mr. Black, the fo- 

 rester at Cawdor- castle, says that when the winter sets in, the stems 

 are often denuded of their bark under the snow, and of course the 

 plants are seriously damaged if not killed. The injury sustained by 

 the extraction of so many of the buds, and by the lopping off of so 

 many of the branches, and most frequently the leading one, is such 

 that many plants never recover it, but grow up cramped, bushy and 

 deformed, instead of the tall, straight and handsome forms so natural 

 to the larch. 



In the dry bare moors the red voles are seldom met with, and con- 

 sequently the plants there escape. They are chiefly congregated in 

 the large hollows which are thickly strewed with boulders, angular 

 fragments of the subjacent rock and debris, and deeply covered with 

 fog (mosses), decayed grass, and the tangled roots of juniper, whins, 

 broom, and the smaller willows. 



Mr. B. mentions that upwards of twenty years ago he felt the rava- 

 ges of this or a similarly destructive animal, on the banks of the Spey 

 about Arndilly and Boat o'Bridge. He has little doubt that it is 

 owing to their abundance and consequent destructiveness, and not to 

 the nature of the soil, that, in some localities, in plantations through- 

 out the north of Scotland, it has been found impossible to raise the 

 larch. At Cawdor he endeavours, and with some success, to lessen 



