in whose museum it now rests. (2) A large male was trapped in the winter of 1870-
1871 by James Pitkeathley, the keeper at Craig Vinian, Dunkeld. When my father
took the shooting of Craig Vinian in 1880 I used to see Pitkeathley’s children
riding on the back of this perhaps the last Perthshire Wild Cat, and, mentioning
the fact a few years later to Col. Drummond-Hay, he said he would like to have
it for the Perth Museum, and so I helped him to procure the specimen. This
Wild Cat died hard. Pitkeathley, in endeavouring to save his terrier, who was
attacking the Cat in the trap, struck at the beast, only slightly wounding it, and
broke the chain or peg which held the trap. The wounded Cat, finding itself released,
immediately got up a tree and sulked; so, leaving his terrier to tree the fearsome
beast, the old keeper ran to his home close by, where he found his gun, and
returned to complete the tragedy. Pitkeathley used often to point out to me the
tree where the last Perthshire Wild Cat met its end. (3) James Boath, the keeper
for thirty years at Rohallion, used to tell me of the last Wild Cat he had seen;
this was about the year 1870, though he could give no certain date. Others obtained
between 1850 and 1864 are mentioned by Harvie-Brown, and one, about which he
is rather doubtful, in the Breadalbane country in 1879.
In southern Argyll the Wild Cat is probably quite extinct, the last being
killed near Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe, in 1864, while about Inverary none has been
heard of since 1828 (Harvie-Brown). From the fairly numerous notices in local
journals it appears, however, to be still sparsely scattered through Ardgower, Lochiel,
Sunart, and Morven. Harvie-Brown considered in 1882 that it was practically
extinct in Ardnamurchan, but that it ‘ may still occasionally turn up ’— a very correct
surmise, for I have a note of a large female which was trapped in Ardnamurchan
in the autumn of 1899, and which was seen by Mr. Stuart, of Kinloch-Moidart, who
informed me of the occurrence. Mr. D. A. Maccoll records the capture of Wild
Cats in Glenorchy,1 and others are recorded from Argyll and Morven,2 while
Mr. Harvie-Brown himself adds -one® so recently as 1904.
Mr. Geo. Sim, the veteran Aberdeen naturalist, in his recently published ‘ Fauna
of Dee ’ (1903), says that the species has now * scarcely a footing within Dee, unless
in some of the wild solitary glens in the west of our district; but even this seems
doubtful.’ The last occurrences of Aberdeenshire Wild Cats, and probably the last
that will be recorded, are thus given by the same author (p. 48): ‘ On June 17,
1875, a male Wild Cat killed in Glen Tanner passed through my hands, and was
1 Fields August 5, 1899. 2 Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist. 1894, p. 121.
* Ibid. 1904, p. 53.