204 



MAMMALS. 



— and his income — Eoualeyn used to cut off the tails and let the 

 old she-ones go. This is a fact.' 



MacGillivray mentions obtaining specimens of the Black Rat 

 from Dr. Gordon of Birnie, about 1838, and also speaks of the 

 species as not uncommon at Keith — within the Deveron watershed 

 {History of British QuadrupedSy p. 238) ; — and we often hear of their 

 former abundance at localities along the latter stream. 



In 1834, Thomas Macpherson Grant wrote : — ' Recently ap- 

 peared at Ballindalloch,' are very numerous, and are the only 

 species of rat known there. James Fennel comments thereon 

 (Field Naturalist, vol. ii. p. 102). 



In 1880, the late Lord Tweedmouth wrote to us that he had never 

 seen the Black Rat or * Rotten ' at Guisachan, but he suspected 

 its presence in small * Toons ' in remote parts, towards Glenshiel, 

 Glenelg, and the west coast ; and this is borne out by an account 

 we have from Osgood H. Mackenzie, Esq., who found one — and 

 only one — dead in a potato-field on Tournaig, on his own pro- 

 perty. No one recognised it, nor had seen one before. But in 

 1889 Lord Tweedmouth {in lit. 12th November) again informed us : 

 — ' I found a dead specimen of 3Ius rattus this year at Cougie, four 

 miles from Guisachan, but unfortunately it was too far gone for 

 preserving. It is nearly twenty years since I have seen a specimen 

 here. Formerly, it was the rat at Camlogie — six miles from the 

 Glomach Fall, and twenty-five from Guisachan.' 



The New Statistical Account speaks of it as at one time common 

 in the parish of Ruthven, but as extirpated by the Brown or 

 Norway Rat {loc. cit. vol. xiii. p. 249). 



Mr. Maclennan, lately forester in Glen Fannich deer-forest, 

 now deceased, wrote to us that ' the last Black House-Rat of which 

 I have heard was one which was killed five years ago (say 1875) 

 by a fellow-servant of my own, in a potato-field in The Nest of 

 Fannich.' ^ 



Mr. Burgess, factor in Glen Urquhart, writing to us, 9/iii/1880, 

 says : — 'Cannot learn of one having been seen since October 1876, 

 in Glen Urquhart or Glenmoriston.' 



Mr. R. Thomson writes : — ' During the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries the Black Rat was predominant all over the 

 country. Only the oldest inhabitants now remember to have 



^ Mr. Maclennan was a good observer, accurate and careful. 



