The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 127 
the estate of Fountainhall, it has been observed, have of late 
suffered much from Squirrels, which were introduced some 
years ago at Dalkeith, and have spread to this neighbourhood. 
They have attacked the Scotch firs in the proportion of about 
one in twenty, and almost every larix and elm, Already 
many of each of them are killed. If the harm they do in 
other places be as great, and be progressive as they multiply, 
this intended improvement will be unfortunate” (“Old 
Statistical Account,” vol. xvii., p. 36). In 1791 it had 
“lately arrived at Penicuik from the menagerie of the Duke 
of Buccleuch” (op. cit., vol. i, p. 132); and in 1795 the 
writers of the account of the parish of Glencross, of whom 
Professor J. Walker was one, record that “the Red Squirrel 
has become extremely common of late years. In this neigh- 
bourhood, the woods abound with them, and they are pretty 
numerous at Woodhouselee ” (op. cit., vol. xv., p. 439). Then 
in 1808 Patrick Neill records it for Newhall, which is much 
farther up the Esk, and where it had already given its name 
to the Squirrel’s Haugh, adding, “introduced from England, 
but now common” (“Gentle Shepherd,” i1., pp. 270 and 279) ; 
and it is evidently the same naturalist who, in Pennecuik’s 
“Tweeddale” (ed. 1815, p. 103), states that the animal was 
“Introduced on the North Esk, from England.” This looks 
not unlike a separate introduction, but it may, of course; 
merely refer to the Dalkeith one. In the course of the next few 
years it had spread through Linlithgowshire into Stirlingshire, 
and even beyond the Forth into Clackmannan and South 
Perthshire,—where no doubt colonists from the north were 
met,—so that when the “New Statistical Account” was 
drawn up it was frequently alluded to. The colonisation of 
Fife seems to have been entered on somewhat later, and 
to have proceeded more slowly. Peeblesshire is also supposed 
to have been colonised from Dalkeith (the doubt expressed 
in Chambers’s “ History of Peeblesshire,” Appendix, p. 525, is 
scarcely worth considering) ; but Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, 
and Berwickshire are thought to have been stocked mainly from 
Minto, where several which the gardener there had obtained 
‘from Dalkeith in 1827 shortly afterwards made their escape. 
According to Dr Hardy, it appeared in Penmanshiel wood, 
