THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL 691 
Falmouth district, it seems to be absent from the west and south-west, 
as well as from many parts of the east and north (Clark). In Lakeland, 
Macpherson seems to suggest that it may not be indigenous, and’ Tate 
says that it is of comparatively modern reintroduction in many parts 
of the north of England (Proc. Berwickshire Field Club, 1., 440). But 
Macpherson admits that a little more than a hundred years ago it was 
certainly well established in Lakeland, that it is represented in 
armorial bearings of the county families, as well as on the Runic 
Bewcastle Cross, and that its skin was known in commerce at Berwick 
in 1377; the skins, however, may have been imported. It is common 
in plantations in Anglesey and Wight. 
Its distribution in Scotland has been investigated by Harvie-Brown, 
whose lengthy and erudite paper! on the subject is difficult to 
summarise. According to this writer there is no record of its existence 
as an indigenous animal south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, 
other than two vague allusions in the Mew Statistical Accounts of 
Berwickshire (p. 299, 1841) and Roxburghshire (p. 4, 1841). To these 
must be added the statement of Sibbald in 1684 (Scotza [llustrata, 
2, ii. 11), that it occurred 7 meridionalis Plage Scotee Sylvis, a 
statement which Harvie-Brown appears to consider as in itself of little 
or no value. Even, however, if Sibbald’s statement be accepted, as it is 
by W. Evans, the animal must have practically disappeared in the low- 
lands soon after Sibbald’s time, retiring to or lingering in the shelter 
of the forests north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. North of these 
Firths, as shown by the records, it appears to have been widely spread 
in the Middle Ages, and was found by Sir Robert Gordon in 1630 even 
in Sutherland (Hzstory of Earldom of Sutherland, 1630, not printed from 
MSS. until 1813). Subsequently, however, it became very rare, if not 
extinct, in the greater part of the country, succumbing to the universal 
destruction of forests, which banished also the roe-deer and caper- 
cailzie. But there is every reason to believe that it lingered on in one 
or two favoured localities, as in Ross-shire, to the end of the eighteenth 
century, and in Ayrshire to about 1839 or 1840. In the great old 
forest of Rothiemurchus it probably never became entirely extinct, so 
that a remnant of the true ancient Scottish race issued thence to 
colonise the new woods and plantations. Finally,in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, it was reintroduced from England in many centres, 
as notably at Dalkeith, Midlothian, about 1772, by Elizabeth, Duchess 
of Buccleuch (W. Evans); and with the growth of plantations has now 
gradually spread over the whole mainland, having re-entered Sutherland 
about 1869 (Alston and Harvie-Brown, Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc., Glasgow, 
ii., 144) and South Ayrshire in 1877 (see Alston; Harvie-Brown, vi., 35 ; 
1 J. A. Harvie-Brown, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc., Edinburgh, Vv. 343; Vi. 31 
and 115. 
