Mr Harvie-Broivn on the Sguirrel in Gh^eat Britain. 345 



species itself in that district. At present the use of the 

 name con is quite extinct in the south of Scotland, but was 

 known in 1771 to the Gaelic bard Alastair M'Donald, as he 

 includes it in his Gaelic Vocabulary thus: " Feoirag=Q. 

 squirrel or conn!' 



Gaelic scholars are of the opinion that con or conn is a 

 shortening of the Gaelic word coinein, a rabbit. Early Scot- 

 tish writers however distinguished between rabbit and squirrel 



thus: 



I saw the Hurcheon and the Hare, 

 The Con, the Cicning, and the Cat. 



— Cherrie and Sloe, 3. 



and again — 



There was the pikit porcoi^ie, 



The Cunincj, and tlie Con, all thrie. 



— Watscrii's Collection, ii. 20. 



And Ferguson in his " Dialect of Cumberland," gives " con, 

 a squirrel's nest ; in Lonsdale, the squirrel," and refers it to 

 the Welsh word cont, a tail. 



The absence of the name altogether from a tract of country 

 intervening between those localities where it is used in Eng- 

 land, and those where it was used in Scotland, viz., around 

 the neighbourhood of Carlisle and the northern portions of 

 Cumberland, is curiously suggestive, and, when taken in con- 

 junction with the facts of the probable disappearance of the 

 species from these tracts at an early date as compared with 

 other localities further south and further north, as I propose 

 to show further on, may not prove altogether useless in 

 assisting us to arrive at conclusions regarding the dispersal, 

 ancient distribution, and subsequent disappearance of the 

 species. 



But it is well known to Erse and Gaelic scholars that often 

 extraordinary confusion exists amongst the names of animals 

 in these languages. Thus coinin, the Irish for a rabbit, is a 

 diminutive of cu, a dog, and means literally ct little dog. The 

 use of the Gaelic coinein is almost if not quite extinct even 

 in districts of Scotland where the Gaelic has been preserved 

 longest in its purity, and the rabbit is only known as the 

 rahhaicl, which distinguishes it as an alien, in such localities 

 where the latter word is used. Under these circumstances 

 VOL. V. z 



