14 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



to point out, is annually reducing the amount of the oldest 

 growth, but the procedure is only consistent with good 

 forestry and the " survival of the fittest." By burning also, 

 as already pointed out, nearly all the old decayed timber 

 around Guisachan was destroyed. 



The main points brought out hitherto are first, that vast 

 and very general destruction, or burning of old trees, took 

 place between 1840 and i860. Lord Tweedmouth relates 

 that "in 1855 there were hundreds and hundreds of white 

 trunks of firs burnt and drying within a mile of Guisachan 

 House " (see previous article op. cit. p. 86). Now, in 1 891, he 

 tells us " there may be a dozen left between Plodda Fall and 

 Garvagh Bridge." And second, that the Woodpecker, formerly 

 abundant, decreased about the same time, and even somewhat 

 suddenly disappeared from its previous summer haunts. We 

 have now to consider the most popularly believed cause of 

 the bird's disappearance — most popularly entertained, by 

 those now living, who can remember the abundance of the 

 Woodpecker, and at the same time, the almost equally 

 phenomenal and sudden increase of the squirrel. This belief 

 is also entertained by foresters, and head wood-managers, a 

 class of men, who in Scotland generally are known to be 

 men of reading, education, and veracity. 



The Squirrel. — We cannot afford space here to do 

 more than simply point out in a very few words the ascertained 

 decline, resuscitation, and increase of this animal in the valley 

 of Spey alone ; prevising that, as elsewhere treated of in 

 considerable detail, 



"The Squirrel is found to have lingered longest where the forest 

 remained longest, and to have revived most rapidly, or spread most 

 rapidly after restoration where forest trees had been planted. . . . 

 Where trees have lingered amidst the Highland glens, they lingered 

 too ; and where trees have led them of late years they have reached 

 considerable altitudes," vide "The Squirrel in Scotland," p. 165 of 

 reprint. 



Nowhere in Scotland are the above remarks more applicable 

 than in the valley of the Spey. About the end of the 1 8th 

 century a succession of severe winters, culminating in that of 

 1795, contributed, almost undoubtedly, to the extinction of 

 the Squirrel in many parts of Scotland ; and that it did not 



