BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 335 
whose daughter Jessie Avas one of the poet's heromes), is 
reported, in 1826, to have had "a brace of young 
Ptarmigans alive and so tame that they run about the 
doors hke domestic fowls. These birds were brought, we 
understand, from the Enghsh side, and were probably 
hatched on the top of Skiddaw."* H. A. Macpherson in 
his Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland refuses to recognise these 
birds, remarking that this story is " not only of uncertain 
authorship, but is too wildly improbable to stand in 
need of serious refutation."! But he subsequently told 
Mr. R. Service that after all there might "perhaps be ' 
something in it." In 1834 it is reported from Moffat 
that " Ptarmigan are very rarely seen,"} and in 1842 Sir 
WiUiam Jardine thus sums up the distribution of this 
species in Great Britain : " Its only habitation now, seems 
to be in the high mountain ranges in the middle of Scotland, 
increasing in abundance as the same kind of wild country 
reaches to the north ; and it also extends to the Hebrides. 
According to Pennant, and some contemporary writers, 
these birds were once found on the hills of Westmoreland 
and Cumberland; and, we beheve, recollections even exist of 
a few having been seen upon the high ranges which appear 
on the opposite border of Scotland. These have been for 
some time extirpated, and unless a few solitary pairs 
remain on Skiddaw, or some of its precipitous neighbours, 
the range of the Grampians will be its most southern British 
station."§ " The high ranges " here referred to " on 
the opposite border of Scotland " are presumablv the 
Moffat Hills. 
An attempt about 1847, by the late Duke of Buccleuch to 
re-introduce Ptarmigan on his moors near Sanquhar failed, 
it is beheved, because of a sequence of mild winters, and 
* Dumfries Courier, January 1st, 1826. 
t Fauna of Lakeland, 1892, p. 334. 
t New Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. IV., p. 108. 
§ Nat. Lib., Vol. XII., 1842, pp. 94, 95. 
