ANIMALS INTRODUCED FOR AMENITY 297 



forests still spread over miles of territory, a few pairs of 

 Squirrels did not survive in their depths, awaiting the dawn 

 of a new era to multiply and spread. 



Dr Harvie-Brown was of opinion that such a resuscitation 

 took place in the Forest of Rothiemurchus on the northern 

 flanks of the Inverness-shire Grampians. Squirrels were seen 

 in 1844 in the woods of Upper Strathspey and in 1856 had 

 reached Grantown-on-Spey. From this point onwards their 

 movements merged with those of the eastern army from 

 Beaufort, with which they apparently combined in the over- 

 running of the southern shores of the Moray Firth and 

 northern Aberdeenshire. 



So the Squirrels, like the Capercaillies, followed the 

 wooded valleys, checked here and there, it is true, by bare 

 stretches of mountain or treeless slopes, but persevering until 

 they had replaced in Scotland a race of Squirrels it had all 

 but lost. Now they range the country from Wigtownshire 

 to Sutherland and from the Atlantic Ocean to the North 

 Sea. The country of their adoption has favoured them ; 

 they have multiplied so enormously that they have come to 

 be regarded as one of the prime pests of the forester, for 

 they destroy the young shoots of pine trees, remove the 

 bark, devour the seeds, and commit these enormities in such 

 overpowering numbers that, in the woods of Glen Tanar, 

 Aberdeenshire, 1000 trees valued at ^500 were destroyed in 

 the first fifteen years after the Squirrel's appearance there. 

 Thereafter an average of about 200 Squirrels was shot in 

 these woods every year. In the Cawdor plantations in 

 Nairnshire, where a small reward of a few pence was given 

 for each Squirrel killed, 14,123 Squirrels were presented in 

 the course of sixteen years, for the slaughter of which the sum 

 of ,213 13^. <^d, was paid. And the rate of increase north 

 of the Caledonian canal has been still more remarkable (see 

 p. 181). 



A success from the acclimatization point of view, the 

 introduction of the Squirrel, like so many introductions, has 

 proved a failure, if not a disaster, from the economic stand- 

 point. 



