The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 125 
the east side of it” (ib. p. 101). Quoting from a charter of 
David I. to the Monastery of Dunfermline, Sibbald further 
shows that Seals were a matter of trade in the twelfth 
century (2b., p. 295).1 In Stark’s “ Picture of Edinburgh” 
(1834), p. 322, we are told that “in the Firth of Forth the 
Seal (Phoca vitulina) is continually showing its black head ;” 
and in the “ New Statistical Account” of Alloa (1840), it is 
recorded that Seals “are constant inhabitants of the Forth 
here.” 
CYSTOPHORA CRISTATA (Zral.). HOODED OR BLADDER-NOSE 
SEAL. 
One of the very few authentic instances of the capture 
of this inhabitant of high latitudes on the British coasts, is 
that of a young male taken opposite St Andrews on 22nd 
July 1872, and of which the late Mr Robert Walker, of the 
University of that town, gave a detailed description at the 
time in the Scottish Naturalist (vol. ii., p. 1). It was about 
4 feet in length—47 inches was the exact measurement— 
and “when discovered it was reposing, near low-water mark, 
on the top of one of the ledges of rock that stretch out into 
the sea.” 
It has been suggested that the “sundry fishes of monstrous 
shape,” mentioned by Boece, “with cowls over their heads 
like unto monks, and in the rest resembling the body of 
man,’ whose appearance in the Firth of Forth in 1577 
caused such consternation among the superstitious folks of 
those days, may have been Hooded Seals, 
Order RODENTIA. 
SCIURUS VULGARIS JZ. SQUIRREL. 
At the present time the Squirrel is a common animal 
throughout the length and breadth of the district; indeed it 
is safe to say there is scarcely a wood of any extent in any 
part of it which does not contain at least afew, Yet it was 
1The words of the charter are:—‘‘ Et de seliches qui ad Kingornum. 
capientur, postquam decimati fuerint ; concedo ut omnes septimos seliches 
habeant.” 
