2 9 o DELIBERATE INTRODUCTION OF NEW ANIMALS 



of Edinburgh, will become a strong colonizing centre in the 

 east of Scotland, for already Grey Squirrels have taken to 

 the woods outside the Park's boundaries, and have been 

 found in the policies of Dalmeny. The pets- of confinement 

 turn out too often to be the pests of the open, and already 

 many plaints have been raised regarding the mischief wrought 

 by these aliens, which, Sir Frederick Treves protested in 

 1917, drive out our Red Squirrel, "eat everything that can 

 be eaten, and destroy twenty times more than they eat." So 

 that the spread of the Grey Squirrel threatens us with a 

 plague as grievous as that which has rewarded the well-meant 

 efforts of the enthusiasts who set the Common Red Squirrel 

 free in our woods, that his interesting presence might add to 

 the delights of Nature lovers. 



THE SPREAD OF THE RED SQUIRREL 



The Common Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris] is so 

 familiar and so much at home in our woodlands that one 

 seldom thinks of him as an alien brought to our shores 

 and encouraged to settle to the loss of our small native 

 birds and of the woods themselves. And, indeed, there is 

 some ground for regarding the Red Squirrel as of native 

 stock ; for, as I shall show in more detail in discussing the 

 effects of the destruction of our forests (see p. 351), it was 

 at one time a familiar denizen of the country north of the 

 line of the Forth and Clyde 



I saw the Hurcheon and the Hare, 

 The Con, the Cuning and the Cat, 



sang the writer of Tke Cherrie and the Slae Cuning being 

 the Rabbit, and Con the Squirrel. 



The demolition of forest, however, banished it entirely 

 from the Lowlands, and gradually drove its diminishing 

 numbers from one stronghold to another, till, by the end 

 of the eighteenth century, it seems to have everywhere dis- 

 appeared, except, perhaps, in the recesses of wilder and more 

 remote forests, such as the native woods of Rothiemurchus 

 at the base of the Inverness-shire Grampians. The present- 

 day numbers and distribution of the Squirrel in Scotland are 

 undoubtedly due in the main to the introduction of new 

 animals from outside the country's bounds, and to their 



