344 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Names of the Species and Topogkaphy. 



In endeavouring to trace the early dispersal and distribu- 

 tion of the squirrel, we may find it useful to call to our aid a 

 study of the various names of the animal — ancient and modern 

 — and of the areas in which these names occur. 



A very large number of provincial names of the species in 

 use in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and in our own country, 

 are directly traceable to their common origin in the name 

 first used by Aristotle, viz., a-Kcovpos {sKia=: shade, and ovpo^—^ 

 tail) through the Latin diminutive sciuriolus.^ 



Our name sqiiirrel occurs at a very early date, being used 

 by St Hugh, dating A.D. 70-1200. Thereafter it occurs con- 

 stantly in later works, through the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, numerously in the seventeenth century, and con- 

 tinuing to the present time, with certain local variations and 

 spellings. Thus we find it mentioned in the first English- 

 Latin Dictionary in the East-Anglian dialect as '' scorel or 

 squerel,"f and we find it again evinced in the local names shi/j/ 

 and skuggie used in Hampshire at the present day, and re- 

 appearing as a Scotch word for shade or shelter in " skug= 

 umbra, shade, sJcug=Si shelter: to skug, io hide; to skoog a 

 shower;" J while on the English border occurs scuggery— 

 secresy, along with other evidence. 



Thus the name squirrel has come to us along with the 

 animal itself northwards, and its use is distributed over many 

 continental countries. 



The distribution of the use of the name con for a squirrel 

 appears to have been in North Lancashire, in the southern 

 portions of Cumberland, and in Westmoreland on the English 

 side of the border, and through the south of Scotland, but 

 is unknown in the northern parts of Cumberland. If it was 

 ever used in the Carlisle district, the use of it must have 

 become extinct with the possible early extinction of the 



* Eugene Eolland : "Faune Populaire de la France, Les Mammiferes sauv- 

 age," pp. 64, 65, 1878. 



t " Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum, Dictionarius Anglo-Latinus 

 Princeps," auctore Frator Galfrido, etc. Circa, a.d. MCCCCXL. 



X Jamieson's "Dictionary of the Scottish Language." 



