SQUIRREL 61 



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 

 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 Eed Squirrel 

 has become extremely common of late years. In this neigh- 

 bourhood, the woods abound with them, and they are pretty 



