42 . Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



have found their way northwards along the comparatively 

 genial coasts, before the larger beasts of prey could find a 

 sufficient stock of game. . . . Such a hypothesis of the 

 dispersal of English mammals through Scotland and Ire- 

 land appears to me to be the only one which explains the 

 peculiarities of their present distribution, and is likewise in 

 accord with the facts of physical geography." 



As far as our present knowledge shows, the squirrel was 

 not indigenous to the central portions of Scotland south of 

 the Firths of Forth and Clyde. If they were indigenous in 

 the south of Scotland at all, they probably passed up along 

 the more " genial coast line " tiU they reached more thickly 

 and warmly wooded tracts. 



As we proceed further north, however, and approach nearer 

 to the southern limits of the old Caledonian forest, circum- 

 stances under which we must consider the prior distribution 

 of the squirrel materially alter. It is always easier to prove 

 a positive than a negative ; and, I believe, there can be little 

 doubt regarding the fact that the squirrel was indigenous to 

 nearly the whole mainland of Scotland north of the Firths of 

 Forth and Clyde.* We have abundant testimony, which will 

 all be brought forward in due course. But before plunging 

 at once into its positive history, there is still a stripe of 

 debatable ground which is worthy of our attention : I mean 

 what may be called the central portion of Scotland, or, in 

 other words, that part of Scotland lying between the Firths of 

 Forth and Clyde, north of the line of the old wall of Antoninus, 

 and between the latter and the Yale of Menteith — in fact, 

 the county of Stirlingshire — a comparatively small area, yet 

 worthy of a short notice in connection with the prior distri- 

 bution of the squirrel in Scotland. 



Mr John Young of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, has 

 further informed me, that he " found some years ago a 

 quantity of hazel nuts, all well-grown, and many of them 

 having a neat round hole gnawed on one side, so as to get 

 at the kernels." These nuts, Mr Young tells me, were filling 



Or, in other words, that, in the first instance, a natural dispersal of the 

 species took place, populating these tracts from a much more southern— or, 

 possibly, eastern— centre in Europe before the separation of Great Britain. 



