EFFECTS UPON ANIMAL LIFE 353 



mentions it as rare in the Spey valley: "scarce in Scotland, 

 a few in the woods of Strathspey." Still a few years later and 

 it had gone from these regions also "I am certain" wrote 

 the Rev. George Gordon, "that squirrels were not known 

 in the lower or northern part of Elginshire, or on Speyside, 

 at least, from 1810." 



It is unnecessary to follow the meagre details of the 

 Squirrel's disappearance in other areas. Nothing could seem 

 more fateful than this gradual dwindling and disappearance 

 of the Squirrel, first in the Lowlands and then, almost simul- 

 taneously, throughout the rest of Scotland, until not an 

 individual remained, except perchance a few that lurked, far 

 from the ways of man, in the depths of such native forests as 

 Rothiemurchus at the base of the Grampians. 



\Vhatfar-reaching influence was telling against the welfare 

 of the Squirrel? It has been suggested that the Marten 

 aided in its extermination. But the Squirrel and the 

 Marten had lived together in Scotland for some thousands 

 of years, without, as it were, coming to serious blows ; and 

 so far from there being evidence of any general increase of 

 Martens, there are good grounds for believing that they also 

 were on the down grade in Scotland. The Squirrel's dis- 

 appearance has also been attributed to a series of severe 

 winters. Yet, although this may have been a factor in 

 temporarily reducing their numbers, it seems of itself a 

 cause insufficient to account for their extermination over so 

 wide an area. 



The great far-reaching cause of the extermination of 

 the Squirrel was the destruction of the forest. We have 

 seen that at an early date the woods of southern Scotland 

 were destroyed to make way for cultivation and sheep pasture; 

 and at an early date the Squirrel disappeared from the 

 Lowlands. In Argyllshire its numbers began to diminish in 

 the middle of the eighteenth century and about the beginning 

 of the nineteenth it had gone. But in 1/30, the great char- 

 coal-using, iron-smelting furnace of Bunawe or Taynuilt, was 

 erected, that of Furnace in 1 750 and that of Goatfield in 1754. 

 In all, more than twenty slag- furnaces have been found in 

 Argyllshire (see Map IV, p. 320), and these bared many dis- 

 tricts of wood, reaching their maximum of destruction in the 

 nineteenth century, when the countryside was so ravished 



R. 23 



