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HE following pages, and the illustrations which accompanythem, are presented to the public, not from a suppositionthat they afford much additional information or superiorityof representation, but with the object of condensing, andconveying in a collected form, records, not only of theremains of feudal castellated residences in my native county, but to perpetuate,however imperfectly, the outlines of those venerable walls, many of which arerendered classical by interesting historical recollections, but which, from the effectsof time, are mouldering away, and will soon be removed beyond the reach ofhuman observation.

Few if any of the counties in Scotland possess so many remains of the forti-fied residences of our ancestors as Aberdeenshire ; some of them of much antiquity,but the greater number either originally constructed, or renovated, during the periodfrom the end of the sixteenth to the close of the seventeenth century. From theconstruction of the vitrified forts, the date of which is beyond the reach of tradi-tional story, to that of the residence of Gregory the Great at Dunnideer, a longperiod must have elapsed. Again, from the death of Gregory in 893, to the occu-pation of Kildrummie by Robert the Bruce , centuries passed away in turbulenceand barbarism.

Hallforest and Ravenscrag must ever be considered as interesting remains.To the former is attached recollections of the early victories of the chivalrous

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