MAMMALS. 



13 



keepers is Tom Craven, whom I knew well when he was game- 

 keeper at Dee Bank, Banchory, and whose father and an uncle were 

 well-known assistants to the Falconers, the brothers Barr ; his 

 brothers are all gamekeepers in that district. In a later letter from 

 Mr. Milne, in reply to my inquiry, he tells me that the two were 

 trapped or shot at the Slough of Mount Slade on the east side of 

 Cloch na ben, and, as stated already, are both preserved in the 

 keepers' house at Glen Dye. 



At the date of 1870 Wild Cats were considered as quite extinct 

 on the eastern ranges of the Grampians in the forests of Dnimouchter 

 and probably in AthoU, but may have lingered a few ye^rs longer in 

 the forest of Ben Alder, on the north side of Loch Ericht (Moray). 



Family CANID^E. 



Canis Eupus, L. allolf^ 



The whole of the Wolf Saga has so lately been done and redone for 

 the complete Scottish Fauna as to render it almost unnecessary to go 

 over the well-beaten track again. However, to preserve the sequence 

 of this series, it may be right to do it once more, at least as regards 

 our present area. 



Mr. Harting, and after him ^Ir. Millais, has very faithfully 

 sket<?hed the chronology, but I do not find that he has referred to 

 a somewhat curious and, I believe, an utterly wrong statement 

 which at least should have some notice taken of it, viz. when Pope 

 Pius II. wrote in the fifteenth century, he made the statement that 

 " there were no Wolves in vScotland ; but it must have been that His 

 Highness was misinformed or had otherwise spoken in error, because 

 there is abundance of evidence to prove that Wolves existed till a 

 much later date, as has been over and over again noted by authors. 



Mr. Millais, quoting Harting's original article, instances Fittis 

 for authoritative remarks upon the Wolf in Eannoch and Lochaber, 

 and John Taylor — the Water Poet — for Forfar (The Pennylesse 

 Pilgrimage, p. 50, of date 1618). In 1528 the Earl of Atholl pro- 

 vided sport for King James v., and showed up amongst other game 

 "Woulffs" (sic). 



Again, in 1563 there was a himt in all the forests of Atholl and 

 Badenoch and Mar, at which Queen Mary "ordered one of the 

 fiercest dogs to be slipped at a Wolf," and five Wolves were killed. 



In 1577 it is mentioned in the old Statistical Account that "The 

 Spittal of Glenshee — an hospital or house of refuge for travellers 



