400 Prooeedingf^ of the Royal Physical Society. 



in the nest, is occasionally true. In the Proceedings of this 

 Society (Vol. II. p. 361, under date 1862), Durham Weir 

 gave two instances of Squirrels devouring young birds — one 

 having been shot at Wallhouse, Linlithgowshire, with a 

 young bird in its claws ; and a few years ago Mr C. Campbell 

 informed me that one had destroyed a brood of young Fly- 

 catchers in Dalmeny Park. In May 1899, near Comrie, I 

 disturbed a Squirrel on the ground, when it ascended a tree 

 in which a pair of Starlings were nesting. The fierce manner 

 in which the birds attacked it and drove it off the tree, 

 showed that they had a strong aversion to its presence in the 

 vicinity of their nest. 



That Squirrels eat fungi is well known to many. I have 

 myself on a good many occasions watched them so engaged. 

 In Dalkeith Park last September, observing a Squirrel on 

 the ground in an open, grassy space where agarics were 

 plentiful, I walked towards it, when it made off and ascended 

 a tree, carrying one of these fungi in its mouth. 



I have several times seen a Squirrel, when hotly pursued 

 in a wood where the trees were not high, come to the ground 

 and take refuge in a rabbit-hole; and a few years ago I 

 dug out and captured one which did so in a wood on the 

 Pentlands. 



Clean and trim as it appears to be, the Squirrel, 

 like the Hedgehog and the Mole, is greatly infested 

 by a flea, the species in this instance being Ceratophyllus 

 sciurorum, Bouche, which is invariably present, and usually 

 in abundance, both in the nests and on the animals them- 

 selves. 



Along with the statement in Sibbald's Scotia Ilkcst7'ata, 

 referred to in my former paper, regarding the presence of 

 the Squirrel in the south of Scotland in the seventeenth 

 century, should be read another a few pages farther on in 

 the same work, namely, in the Appendix to the Historia 

 Animalium in Scotid (p. 37), where he mentions, on the 

 authority of Dr Archibald, the occurrence of the animal in 

 the south and west of Scotland. {Cf., in this connection, 

 Harvie-Brown's " History of the Squirrel in Great Britain," 

 Froc. Roy. Rhys. Soc. Edin., VI. p. 40). 



