288 DELIBERATE INTRODUCTION OF NEW ANIMALS 



itself, and Mr E. R. Alston recorded that it still occurred but 

 in dwindling numbers forty years afterwards. So far as I 

 can discover, the Virginian Deer have now entirely dis- 

 appeared, and are reported to have died out not many 

 years after Alston referred to them in 1872. 



It has been found, too, that the Japanese Deer (Cervus 

 sika], native though it be of far distant China, Manchuria 

 and Japan, takes kindly to our woodlands. In 1887 

 Sir Arthur Bignold turned out at Lochrosque, in Ross, 

 one buck and four does, and these have so thriven and 

 multiplied that 30 years after, they have colonized far beyond 

 the bounds of their first settlement, and have straggled 

 at one time or another over the greater part of Ross. At 

 the present day the naturalized descendants of the original 

 five aliens are believed to form a herd of from 1 50 to 200 

 in number. 



THE AMERICAN GREY SQUIRREL 



If one race of animals more than another has benefited 

 by territorial acquisitions in this country through the whims 

 of man, it is the tribe of the Squirrels. The Grey Squirrel 

 (Sciurus carolinensis] belongs by rights to the American 

 continent from southern Canada to southern Mexico and 

 Guatemala, but its silver-grey coat and lively habits have 

 made it a favourite pet in this as well as in its native land. 

 The escape or release of such pets has already set up many 

 potential centres of distribution in England : in Regent's 

 Park, populated from the Zoological Garden, in Richmond 

 Park, whence it has wandered in force into the open 

 country of Surrey, in Hampstead, in Buckinghamshire, in 

 Bedfordshire, colonized from the Duke of Bedford's collec- 

 tion at Woburn, and in 'Rougemont Gardens, Exeter, from 

 which the first west of England specimens have recently 

 been reported. 



In Scotland the Grey Squirrel has made good an estab- 

 lishment on the west coast and is spreading there. A single 

 pair was released at Finnart on Loch Long about 1890, and 

 mainly from Mr J. Paterson's records of their dispersal 

 we learn that the Squirrels had spread northwards to 

 Arrochap and Tarbert in 1903; eastwards over moderately 



