76 
MAMMALS. 
told him he took them home to try and rear them, but that 
they were so wild they would not eat meat or take any food, 
and died. Mr. Sandison has stuffed several Sutherland 
wild-cats, and knows them well, and says that there is no 
mistake that the Stirkoke wild-cat was a genuine speci- 
men " (W. Eeid in lit.). In, the Dunbeath Lists of Vermin 
supplied to us by Mr. J. H. Sinclair, two wild-cats are 
included as killed in 1875, one in 1876, and the last on the 
list in 1877. 
Family CANID^ffi. 
22. Vu I pes Vulgaris, jBms. Fox. 
Very plentiful, a regular crop appearing every year, and 
affording no mean addition — in the form of premiums — 
to the gamekeepers' salaries, besides employing regular 
fox-hunters. £1 is given for an old dog, £2 for a vixen, 
and 10s. each for cubs. Between 1831 and 1834 premiums 
were paid for 239 foxes on the Sutherland estates; in 
Assynt and Durness for 156 between 1870 and 1879; in 
the Eeay Forest and Glen Dhu, 145 between 1866 and 
1880 by one return, and by another, in the Eeay Forest 
between 1873 and 1879, 164; or, in all, from Eeay 
Forest and Glen Dhu in that time, 309. In Assynt, on 
Mr. Whitbread's shooting, by one keeper alone, no less 
than 53 between 1869 and 1880. Between 1866 and 1869 
340 were killed. On Dunrobin 60 Foxes were killed be- 
tween 1873 and 1880. In Assynt also, on another beat, 
another man got 11 foxes between May 1879 and May 
1880. Still very abundant in the East, and in normal 
numbers around Tongue, neither increase nor decrease 
being observable. 
Is obtained between Caithness and Sutherland. Mr. 
William Eeid has never himself met with it around Wick 
nor elsewhere in the north of the county, and it does not 
