126 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
not always so, for apparently the Squirrel was either entirely 
absent or very scarce in the south of Scotland when intro- 
duced at Dalkeith in the latter part of last century. Mr 
Harvie-Brown, who has made the history of the animal a 
special study, and, as the outcome of his investigations, has 
published a long and interesting paper in the Proceedings 
of the Royal Physical Society (vols. v. and vi.), considers 
there is no evidence of its prior existence in this section of 
the country, and lays little stress on the statement in the 
“ New Statistical Account” of Berwickshire (1841, page 299), 
that “the Red Squirrel is said to have been at one time a 
denizen of Dunglass woods, in Cockburnspath parish.” I 
cannot help thinking, however, that it must at one time have 
been indigenous in the Lowlands, and have gradually retired 
to the Highlands in consequence of the destruction of the 
ancient woods and forests; otherwise, what are we to make 
of Sibbald’s statement (“Scotia Illustrata,” 1684),—* In 
Meridionalis Plage Scotiee Sylvis reperitur” (It is found in 
the woods of the southern part of Scotland)? There can 
be no doubt, however, that the south-eastern counties owe 
their present stock very largely, if not entirely, to the introduc- 
tion of a few, first at Dalkeith Park about 1772, and then at 
Minto in 1827. The history of these introductions, and the 
subsequent spread of the species, are so very fully set forth 
in Mr Harvie-Brown’s paper, that I need only refer to a few 
of the leading facts, and draw attention to one or two records 
which he does not allude to. 
The current belief, from the time of the “Old Statistical 
Account” till now, is that Elizabeth, Duchess of Buccleuch 
(the present Duke’s great grandmother), introduced Squirrels 
from England about 1772 to the menagerie which her 
husband (Duke Henry) then kept in the park at Dalkeith. 
Gaining their liberty either accidentally or by design, and 
finding a congenial home in the woods of the park, they 
increased with astonishing rapidity, so that in the course of the 
next twenty or thirty years they had spread eastward into 
Haddingtonshire and westward over the entire valley of the 
Esk. Here is what the minister of Pencaitland, in East 
Lothian, had to say of it in 1796: “The young woods on 
