THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL 695 
of prey—stoats, martens, and perhaps wild cats—must have gathered 
in unusual numbers could have had no small influence. 
The Squirrel is absent from Man (Kermode in Ralfe) and all the 
Scotch Islands, except Bute, where it is said to have been introduced 
about 1873 (Harvie-Brown), but is now extinct. 
Distribution in time :—Notwithstanding the great antiquity of the 
genus, it appears to have left but few traces of its former existence in 
the fossiliferous deposits of Britain. Apart from the early Tertiary 
remains noticed above, our knowledge is limited to the scanty 
information gleaned from the late pliocene Norfolk “Forest Bed.” 
Heer first noticed that some fossil fir-cones from this deposit appeared 
to have been gnawed by Squirrels (Lyell, Aztzg. of Man, 1863, 
215). Later, Newton (Vert. For. Bed., 92) ascribed a humerus in the 
Green collection (British Museum) to S$. vulgaris ; this specimen is 
reputed to be from the Forest Bed of Ostend, Norfolk, but its age, 
as Newton pointed cut, is quite doubtful, there being a much more 
recent alluvial deposit in the vicinity from which Green also collected 
many specimens. Quite recently, however, a premolar has been found 
in the Forest Bed at West Runton, and this proves the late Pliocene 
species—S. whztec, Hinton (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., January 1914, 
193)—to have had a more bunodont and primitive dentition than 
leucourus or vulgaris ; when better known, S. whztez will very likely 
prove to belong to a genus distinct from Sczwrus in the strict modern 
sense. No trace at all of the genus has been so far discovered in the 
British Pleistocene, a fact to be ascribed to its arboreal habits, and 
the consequent remoteness of the chance of entombment rather than 
to its absence from our primeval forests. Woldrich has referred 
some fragments from the late Pleistocene of Zuzlawitz, Bohemia, to 
S. vulgaris. 
Description:—The British Squirrel is a slenderly built rodent, 
characterised in life by its peculiarly graceful and elegant appearance. 
Its neck and limbs, being much less completely invested in the common 
integument of the trunk, are more obvious externally, and apparently 
longer than in MZurzde. 
The head is moderately large, rounded behind, with a narrow, 
rather short, but relatively deep rostrum. The muzzle, except at the 
margins of the nostrils, is hairy ; the median walls of the nostrils are 
narrowly but deeply separated by an upward continuation of the lip- 
cleft. Besides the whiskers, which are numerous stout, black hairs, of 
which some surpass the head in length, tactile hairs occur in three 
positions, viz. (1) above the eyes, where there are two or three long 
and rather fine black vibrisse; (2) on each cheek three or four 
similar black hairs are placed below the eye, on the level of a line 
drawn from the mouth to the base of the ear; and (3) on the ventral 
