354 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



of its forest that the fires of the last survivors, Taynuilt and 

 Goatfield, had to be blown out for lack of fuel. The 

 Squirrel was exterminated in Argyllshire through the destruc- 

 tion of woodland, caused by the timber-using slag-furnaces. 



In the northern counties the same factor was at work. 

 In 1730 large iron-furnaces were erected at Invergarry, and 

 at* Abernethy in Strathspey. These and their many pre- 

 decessors in Nairn and Inverness-shire the numbers re- 

 corded from these counties by Prof. Ivison Macadam are 12, 

 5 and 15 respectively had ceased to work only when the 

 forest within manageable distance had been consumed. The 

 maximum destruction wrought by them corresponds in time 

 with the disappearance of the Squirrel in these areas. 



So it was in other regions. The Squirrel, driven from 

 one haunt to another, sought shelter in the deepest and 

 thickest woods, and these very woods, just oh account of 

 their depth and thickness, were those which attracted the 

 iron-smelters of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries. The terrible havoc wrought in the forests by the 

 iron-furnaces was the main factor in exterminating the native 

 Squirrels of Scotland. A clearer case could scarcely be 

 found of the indirect influence upon animal life of a single 

 industry, for the Squirrel, whose history we have traced in 

 some detail, may be looked upon as simply a type of the 

 forest denizen. 



The introduction by man of a fresh race of Squirrels to 

 Scotland has been described in another connection (p. 290) 

 but this again affords corroborative evidence of the influence 

 of forest destruction, for it was the general replanting of 

 woodland in the latter part of the eighteenth century which 

 gave the Squirrel a new lease of life and led again to its 

 rapid spread throughout the country. 



THE CAPERCAILLIE 



The influence of forest destruction would be very partially 

 traced were no further reference made to its effect upon 

 bird-life ; and no bird could afford a more typical test case 

 than the forest-haunting Capercaillie, the "Cock-of-the- 

 Woods." It was a bird well known to our predecessors. 

 Probably at one time it inhabited the whole country, but I 



